International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 75

International Journal on Criminology
The network was accused of introducing narcotics (heroin and ecstasy),
weapons, mobile phones, tobacco and even champagne into several prisons in
Maryland. Thirteen searches were conducted and seizures were made in sixteen cells
in six different prisons. One former guard, another still working at the prison and a
kitchen worker at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore were arrested along
with another guard at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup. 246
In Brazil, escapes reached a peak in July 2001. One hundred and six prisoners
escaped together from Carandiru prison in Sao Paulo, through a tunnel. It was the
largest multiple escape ever recorded. But not all attempts succeed. On November 8,
2003, more than eighty inmates trying to escape through tunnels, again in São Paulo,
were greeted by police at the tunnel's exit—although they fared better than a number
of their co-escapees who died of asphyxiation underground. In more spectacular style,
some breakouts involve armed attacks, inside the prison or on prisoner convoys.
A survey of these escapes has shown that they were organized and funded by
prison gangs, particularly the PCC. An escape attempt typically costs between 4000
and 8000 dollars per person, most of which is used to bribe the guards.
Escapes are also used to strengthen the organization. According to recent
information from the Paraguayan police, an upsurge in robberies of cash transportation
trucks, banks, and ATMs in the East of the country is attributable to a gang largely
made up of Brazilian PCC members. 247
In June 2014, eleven members of the gang escaped from the Brazilian Foz de
Iguaçu prison. In another escape from the same prison, four months later seven PCC
members got away to Paraguay. All eighteen criminals are thought to have joined the
Paraguayan gang of Amado Ramon Benitez, a specialist in armed robberies.
B - Outside
Prison gangs are born and proliferate in prison, but their criminal activities do not
stop at the prison walls. Just as contacts are needed outside to bring the objects
of trafficking in, in many countries, “business” in the free world is managed by
bosses in prison.
1 - The Management of Criminal Business from Inside Prison
Management of criminal activity in the outside world relies on communications.
While the mobile phone is today undeniably the most practical means of achieving
this, and while its use is growing everywhere, possession is not always easy to hide.
The authorities are increasingly vigilant, and techniques for scrambling signals over a
limited area are being developed, although they are not always appreciated, nor easily
implemented.
246
US Department of Justice, April 16, 2009.
247
ABC Color, Paraguay. April 12, 2015.
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