Brazil: Suffocation in Sao Paulo

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Outside, carnival celebrations were reaching their climax. But inside a Sao Paulo municipal lockup, policemen were exacting savage revenge for a failed ! escape attempt. They stripped naked 51 prisoners, allegedly beat them, then crushed them into an unventilated 5-ft. by 10-ft. cell. Whether the prisoners were locked in for 70 minutes or four hours remains a matter of dispute. What is not is that when the door was opened, nine were dead of suffocation and another nine died shortly after being rushed to the hospital.

That barbaric incident only spotlighted Brazil's long history of police brutality. It is caused in part by a tradition of contempt toward offenders, and is compounded by a growing crime rate that has frightened many well-off Brazilians into indifference toward conditions in the country's overcrowded prisons. According to local records, 112 criminal suspects have died in police custody since 1982.