Humiliation and torture are part of everyday life. For instance, detainees in civil police precincts in Belo Horizonte are regularly herded naked into a courtyard while their cells are searched. They are then hosed down with water by police officers standing on the roof. A special room is set aside for torturing prisoners. In response to the prison crisis and growing public concern, Brazil has embarked on a major construction programme to reduce overcrowding, but the structural flaws and systematic disregard for human rights have simply been exported to the new installations - where riots and violence are already breaking out.
Women prisoners are usually poor, uneducated, and held for petty or non-violent offences.
Most of them are also heads of households. In Tatuap prison most women inmates had children, and over half had been sole family breadwinner. When women are jailed, their families are often split up, with children placed in state care or with relatives. The only men generally employed in women's prisons are the armed guards on the gates and the military police guarding the perimeter, but AI has documented beatings of women prisoners carried out by male prison staff or the civil police 'special squad'. In 1985 Brazil ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.