At least 25 inmates have reportedly died in clashes between two rival factions in a prison in Brazil’s far north, the latest episode of violence shaking the country’s underfunded and overcrowded penal system.
Seven of the dead were beheaded and six burned to death in fighting at a prison in Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state, the news site G1 reported, citing local police.
The bloodshed began when inmates from one wing of the Agricola de Monte Cristo prison broke into another wing. Prisoners were armed with knives and wooden clubs, an inmate’s wife who was in the prison when the riot broke out told G1.
The Roraima state secretary of justice, Uziel Castro, said the fight broke out during visiting hours, and that about 100 relatives of inmates were briefly held hostage.
The rioters demanded that a judge come to hear their demands. Instead, special operations police stormed the prison, released the hostages and regained control of the site by early evening. “All the hostages were released,” Castro said, adding that most of them were women.
The prison, 2,100 miles (3,400km) north-west of Rio de Janeiro, is in a state that borders Venezuela and Guyana.
Joana Moura, the head of the union of Roraima penal workers, told the Folha de Boa Vista newspaper that the incident was “a reflection of the lack of interest from the state government” towards the prison system. According to Moura, “there is no security equipment, there are not enough personnel for the tasks, and the agents are working beyond their limits”.
Officials from the coroner’s office had gone to the prison to remove the bodies, the newspaper reported.
Fights and riots are frequent throughout Brazil’s overcrowded prison system. As of the end of 2014, there were 622,000 people imprisoned in Brazil, according to a ministry of justice report, which added that most of the prisoners were black males.
Brazil has the world’s fourth largest prison population, the report said, after the US, China and Russia.
Human rights groups have long complained about the deplorable conditions in Brazilian prisons. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a statement expressing its concern over prison violence and urging structural reforms after 14 inmates died in prisons in the north-eastern state of Ceara in late May.
In a separate incident in September, about 200 inmates rioted and escaped from the overpopulated Jardinopolis prison in Sao Paulo state.
