Development: On 18 December, 18 people were taken hostage during a prison riot at the Milton Dias penitentiary in Baixada Fluminense region, Rio de Janeiro state.
Significance: This is part of a series of violent prison uprisings in various parts of Brazil. It comes days after President Michel Temer ordered the military to take control of police operations in Rio de Janeiro. He said organised crime had taken over there and become a “cancer, spreading across the country”.
- Local authorities managed to contain the unrest at Milton Dias in the early hours of Monday morning (19 February). The hostages (including eight guards and 10 inmates) were seized by rebels after authorities thwarted a planned prison break. The hostages were eventually freed following hours of negotiations.
- During the unrest, three prisoners were shot and have since been taken to a local hospital. Local authorities sent for reinforcements, including members of the special battalions unit BOPE and the shock battalion (BPChoque).
- Like many Brazilian prisons, Milton Dias is overcapacity, with 2,027 prisoners crammed in an enclosure built for 884. Footage from local media shows that the prison appears to be run by criminals, with some inmates given special privileges like access to mobile phones.
- On the day of the riots, Brazil’s state prisons authority (Seap) was about to announce a new batch of penitentiary security measures for Rio de Janeiro. The details of these have not yet been publicly disclosed. But a representative from Seap told local daily G1 that 54 state prisons were on “red alert” to prevent more prison breaks.
- Meanwhile, the federal government has sent a special task force (composed of federal police and members of the national forces) to the North-Eastern state of Ceará after a senior trafficker from Brazil’s biggest drugs-trafficking organisation, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), was killed. This has sparked fear of further reprisals.
Looking Ahead: Following the incident in Rio de Janeiro, on 22 February representatives from the neighbouring states of Espírito Santo, São Paulo, and Minas Gerais will meet with Brazil’s justice minister Torquim Jardim to discuss ways to strengthen security in the south of Brazil and share intelligence between states.
