URBAN VIOLENCE, PRISON CONDITIONS AND HUMAN DIGNITY

Abstract

The paper deals with a situation that perhaps represents one of the most radical and profound challenges to the claim that contemporaneous western societies – and Brazilian society in particular – share the values concerning equality and essential or ontological dignity of mankind. It is an attempt to investigate how Brazilian society, immersed in a context of fear as a result of urban violence, deals with its prison population. This paper is divided into three main parts. Part one deals with a situation of fact: traditional, ongoing, generalized, serious and practically institutionalized violation of the fundamental rights of prison inmates in Brazil. This situation of fact easily leads one to conclude that inmates in Brazil are not treated like human beings (and are probably not even considered as human beings). Part two is an attempt to examine some possible explanations of why this situation exists. In part three, the paper tries to suggest that there is a connection between how prisoners are treated and the current level of urban violence in Brazil as a contributing factor. Considering that neither the principle of human dignity nor the actions of the legal system have been able to change the scenario that has built up in recent decades, perhaps it would be useful to suggest that inhumane treatment of inmates is not just a problem restricted to prisons: society as a whole receives the effects of this policy in the form of more violence.