In partnership with Open Society Foundation, Brazil Fund launched a special Criminal Justice funding line called – Pre-trial detention in the Northeast, with emphasis on the racial issue, supporting five projects, in five different states.
All projects were analyzed by experts during the selection process, which was triggered by invitation letters to potential initiatives.
A total of $400,000 is distributed to the projects and each initiative receives R$ 80,000 for up to 18 months of work.
Taciana Gouveia, the Fund’s project coordinator declares that the abuse in the pre-trial detention, as well as the institutional racism are serious problems in Brazil. More than half of the prison population (61.6%) is integrated by black men and women.
According to InfoPen (National Survey of Penitentiary Information) of the Ministry of Justice, there is 622,202 arrested people in Brazil. Of this total, 40% are pre-trial detainees, or have not yet been tried and remain imprisoned.
A UN report released in March this year on institutional racism in the country’s prison system shows that the black population suffers significantly greater risk of being victims of abuse, torture, neglect and also of receiving harsher sentences.
