PCC and Comando Vermelho — Brazil's Cartels Within the Prison System

Comando Vermelho (CV)

The Comando Vermelho was founded in 1979 in the maximum-security prison of Ilha Grande (Rio de Janeiro) — originally as a collective of political prisoners and ordinary criminals with the aim of collective defense. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s the group transformed into the dominant drug cartel in the favelas of Rio. Today the CV controls large parts of the city and is active transnationally.

Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC)

The Primeiro Comando da Capital was founded in 1993 in the Taubaté prison (São Paulo) — a direct reaction to the Carandiru massacre of October 2, 1992 (111 dead in a police operation). The PCC developed into a structured criminal organization with its own “statute” and today controls large parts of the Brazilian drug, weapons and smuggling market. It is the largest criminal organization in Latin America, with activities in more than 25 Brazilian states and in Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina.

Anísio Jobim massacre 2017

On January 1, 2017, a massacre with 56 dead took place at the Complexo Penitenciário Anísio Jobim (Compaj, Manaus, Amazonas) between PCC- and CV-affiliated groups. It triggered a wave of prison massacres in January 2017 (Roraima, Rio Grande do Norte) with a total of more than 130 dead.

Relevance to extradition law

The de facto control of the Brazilian prison system by the PCC and the CV is a central argument in German extradition proceedings: placement in the regular state prison system involves considerable dangers to life — especially for persons who do not belong to one of the dominant factions or who are in conflict with them. The isolated federal maximum-security system (Sistema Penitenciário Federal) is the exception, reserved for only a few hundred prisoners. Diplomatic assurances regarding the specific facility, the protective regime and segregation are imperative.

← Back to the glossary index