The military police officers who run the Central Prison of Porto Alegre

Abstract

They are officers of the Military Brigade (the PM of Rio Grande do Sul) who command the Central Prison of Porto Alegre. This article seeks to reveal their ideas, in order to determine if they, prepared for police activities, can be considered and / or if they consider themselves as prison guards. To this end, between April and September 2012, I conducted interviews with the eight senior officers assigned to the prison and realized that these officers are police officers and not jailers, and do not declare themselves as such. The contact with the society of captives is brief and the external ties are strong, since rarely is a military policeman more than two years in prison; therefore, they are not “contaminated” by them (you must also discard the idea that they become corrupt servants). In their daily lives, they realize that they like to be working at home, feel prestigious and understand that the corporation receives consideration from the community for being calm and calm in an institution that, before, was synonymous with problems and disturbances to order. In this way, officers organize the Central Prison to properly apply the restrictive penalty of liberty to those who have been tried and convicted by the Judiciary. It is evident that, due to the physical structure made available to them, and the number of people delivered (above the capacity of the house), they are unable to do so within the standards of respect for human rights.