Brazil resorts to house arrest for 200,000 convicts, including two former presidents

"Jair Messias Bolsonaro, 70, is undoubtedly the most famous prisoner in Brazil right now. The former president has been detained at home for two and a half months and wears an electronic ankle bracelet. He has only left the villa in Brasilia where he lives with his wife and young daughter to go to the hospital. In a matter of weeks, a judge will decide whether he will remain under house arrest or go to jail."

"Both he and Bolsonaro have benefited from a profound change in the prison system that benefits both prisoners in pretrial detention and those who have already been convicted. House arrest has gone from being an exception to something relatively frequent. In the space of a decade, the number of inmates under house arrest has soared from 6,000 to 200,000 in other words, one in five prisoners. Equally striking is the fact that this has not served to alleviate the calamitous situation in prisons."

"The Catholic nun emphasizes something that is often forgotten: Granting house arrest to people in vulnerable situations is not an exceptional or benevolent measure: it is a legal, humanitarian and constitutional requirement. Brazil arrests a lot and badly, says Cristiano Maronna, director of Justa, a platform that investigates the Brazilian justice system. Almost a million Brazilians are in prison, according to official figures."

High-profile figures such as Jair Bolsonaro and Fernando Collor de Mello are currently under house arrest, reflecting a wider change in Brazil's prison system. Over the past decade, house arrests rose from roughly 6,000 to about 200,000, equating to one in five prisoners. Despite this increase, prison overcrowding and mass incarceration remain severe and unchanged. Church prison pastoral coordinators note no observable improvement in conditions from the rise in home detention. Advocates stress that house arrest for vulnerable people is a legal and humanitarian requirement, while Brazil still holds nearly a million people behind bars.

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