Brazil seeks "to humanize" crowded, cruel prison system, officials say

Officials are looking for ways to "humanize" Brazil's prison system, which is plagued by overcrowding, violence and a lack of institutional control, leading to situations of extreme cruelty for inmates.

Brazil has the world's fourth-largest prison population after the United States, China and Russia, and experts say an additional problem is that most facilities are operated by regional governments, each with different policies and resources, which results in a wide variety of conditions in the South American country's 1,420 jails and prisons.

Source: EFE