Sociedade Paraense de Defesa de Direitos Humanos – SDDH (Pará Society for the Defense of Human Rights – SDDH)

Contribute to promoting a culture of respect for human rights in the prison system of Pará and the Amazon region.

• Monitoring of the prison system and public security based on visits to prison units, monitoring custody hearings, and complaint filing, documenting reported violations and their relation to racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation issues;
• Mobilization of the human rights network in Pará and Amazônia through the promotion of training and articulation venues;
• Advocacy for the construction of policies to prevent torture and violations of rights in the prison system by attending state councils and committees, mainly the Public Security Council and the Mechanisms for Combating and Preventing Torture and the production of reports/technical notes for authorities.
• Communication and dissemination of information, by sharing content in social and alternative media and the publication of theJornal Resistência newsletter.

The reality of the Brazilian penitentiary system is staggering. According to the CNJ, Brazil has a total of 654,372 people in prison, of which 221,054 are under provisional detention. The percentage of provisional prisoners per federative unit ranges between 15% and 82%. According to information from the Superintendency of the State of Pará Penitentiary System (SIPE), there are a total of 16,735 prisoners in the state. Of these, 6,232 are provisional, 8,438 sentenced and 1,964 are provisional/sentenced (prisoners who are defendants in two actions, one with a convicted status and another in the condition of provisional prisoner). It is important to note that there are 923 female inmates in the state, of which 439 are provisional. Analyzing the current situation of the penitentiary system in Pará, according to the CNJ, the legislation is not fulfilled concerning provisional arrests. The average number of days each provisional inmate is detained is 283. Despite the ethnic and social diversity of the Brazilian population, people subjected to the prison system are almost always of the same color and from the same social condition and territories as those historically shunned from the Brazilian civilization process. The inmates are young, poor, peripheral and black. Incarceration in Brazil is related to the structural racism present in our society. The prison system in the state of Pará directly influences the increase in crime by subjecting so many people, especially young adults, to incarceration without caring for the safety of these inmates, stacked in unsanitary cells without any professional/educational training activities. Also, torture and maltreatment are endemic in the state, reaching inmates and adolescents in conflict with the law committed to the socio-educational system.

The Para Society for the Defense of Human Rights (SDDH) is a non-profit civil society founded in 1977, whose mission is to value and defend human rights in the perspective of a just and egalitarian society, whose objective is to protect those subjected from human rights violations. It always works to develop and disseminate mechanisms for the diffusion of the human rights culture, participating in the elaboration of public policies, especially in the areas of justice and public safety, and more recently in the field of ​​human rights education. Founded in a context where the military dictatorship prevailed in Brazil, over the years and logically, from the historical changes, the SDDH has taken on other flags and today, in the 21st century, it develops actions that are a mixture of research, protection, denunciation, and proposition, of regional and international scope.