Finger crushing reported in prisons across five Brazilian states
A torture practice in which the fingers of people in jail are mangled has been identified in five Brazilian states by national anti-torture body MNPCT. The violence was perpetrated by agents from the Penitentiary Intervention Task Force (FTIP), linked to the country’s Ministry of Justice.
MNPCT Coordinator Carolina Barreto Lemos revealed they began to notice the spread of such cases after prison crackdowns by task force agents in the states of Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará, in the Northeast. Records of prisoners with crushed fingers were also found in Roraima, Amazonas, and Pará, in the North.
“Obviously, this is utterly illegal. It can’t be justified from any viewpoint. This is clearly a crime of torture, as it’s a way of inflicting an illegitimate punishment in addition to the deprivation of liberty itself,” she pointed out.
Headed by federal police officers, the task force was originally created to tackle crises, riots, and rebellions and reestablish order in correctional facilities. It was first deployed at the Alcaçuz Penitentiary, in Rio Grande do Norte, back in 2017, to deal with a conflict that led to the deaths of 26 prisoners.
Lemos recalled the testimony of Mauro Albuquerque, whom she terms a major supporter of the finger-mangling technique. Albuquerque advocated the practice at a 2017 public hearing in Natal, capital city of Rio Grande do Norte, after mistreatment was reported to target inmates in the state. He was was state secretary of justice at the time.
“When you strike the fingers—not because it won’t leave a mark; it will—you want him no longer to have the strength to carry a knife and stab an agent or hurl a stone at an officer,” Albuquerque is quoted as saying in an MNPCT report from 2019.
The task force was in charge not only of interventions but also of providing training for state agents, which led to the further dissemination of the practice outside the work of the task force, Lemos went on to note.
“This brought the finger crushing beyond the scope of their operations. In November last year, [we] were in Rio Grande do Norte, which was where the task force offered training. They were no longer present, but [cases] were found there yet again,” the coordinator reported.
Ceará state
Marina Araújo, chair of Ceará’s Committee for the Prevention and Combat of Torture, confirms that fracturing the fingers of incarcerated people is not an isolated phenomenon, but has been identified as systematic for a few years now.
In a statement sent last week to the state government of Ceará, the committee lists 33 cases of torture from July 2022 to June 2023.
“Torture has been exhaustively identified by multiple local and national bodies, on a daily basis. For instance, we have a 2019 report uncovering a series of cruel treatment practices in prison facilities. Similar situations were described by the National Council of Justice back in 2021,” Marina Araújo noted.
In a note, the state’s Penitentiary Administration Secretariat refers to the accusations as unfounded, adding “it repudiates the coordinated attack against the large-scale reintegration policies in the state.” The state prison system, the secretariat argued, is regularly visited by inspectors from the Judiciary, the Prosecution Service, the Public Defender’s Office, among other bodies.
Federal government
The federal government’s National Secretariat of Criminal Policies declared it is investigating torture complaints, adding that the task force had its modus operandi revamped and was renamed Penitentiary Cooperation Force in a bid to bolster prison management, agent training, and assistance for inmates.
The secretariat also mentioned efforts in needs assessment as it seeks to hear testimonies from both inmates and penitentiary agents.
