Prison without guards or weapons in Brazil
Tatiane Correia de Lima is a 26-year-old mother of two who is serving a 12-year sentence in Brazil. The South American country has the world’s fourth largest prison population and its jails regularly come under the spotlight for their poor conditions, with chronic overcrowding and gang violence provoking deadly riots.
Lima had just been moved from a prison in the mainstream penitential system to a facility run ______(1) the Association for the Protection and Assistance to Convicts (APAC) in the town of Itaúna, in Minas Gerais state. Unlike in the mainstream system, “which steals your femininity”, as Lima puts it, at the APAC jail she is allowed to wear her own clothes and have a mirror, make-up and hair dye. But the difference between the regimes is far more than skin-deep.
The APAC system has been gaining growing recognition as a safer, cheaper and more humane answer to the country’s prison crisis. All APAC prisoners must have passed through the mainstream system and must show remorse and be willing to follow the strict regime of work and study which is part of the system’s philosophy. There are no guards or weapons and visitors are greeted by an inmate who unlocks the main door to the small women’s jail.
Inmates are known as recuperandos (recovering people), reflecting the APAC focus ______(2) restorative justice and rehabilitation. They must study and work, sometimes in collaboration with the local community. If they do not - or if they try to abscond - they risk being returned to the mainstream system. There have been physical fights but never a murder at an APAC jail.
Adapted from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44056946