Court orders Brazilian state to build more jails to solve prison crisis

A local court in Brazil's northeastern state Maranhao, where prison violence and inmate deaths have skyrocketed, ordered the state to build new prisons to alleviate overcrowding in cells in 60 days. The court said prisons should preferably be built in the state's rural regions, away from state capital Sao Luis, and called for more prison wardens, as well as improvements to facilities. The Pedrinhas prison, plagued by riots and gang wars, is located in the state capital. Sixty inmates were murdered there last year, and another two in the first week of 2014. National Security Force troops were stationed there to quell recent violence, but in retaliation, according to authorities, crime lords serving time at Pedrinhas ordered a violent spree in the city. Several buses were set on fire, injuring a number of people and killing a six-year-old girl. The escalation of violence in and out of the state's prisons has shocked Brazil, and led the nation to take a closer look at the local authorities. A special Senate commission has found that despite receiving federal funding to expand prison capacity, state officials have not done this. If the court's ruling is not fulfilled by the deadline, the state will have to pay a daily fine of 50,000 reals (21,276 U.S. dollars). As one of Brazil's poorest states, Maranhao is widely regarded as being under the political and financial control of one family. Roseana Sarney currently serves as the state governor. Her father, Jose Sarney, served as the governor in the 1960s and later as Brazil's president from 1985 to 1990. Sarney's administration has come under fire for scheduling biddings amid the prison crisis to see which purveyor of luxury items, such as lobster and champagne, would win a contract worth nearly a half million U.S. dollars to supply the governor's official residence. Sarney also faced criticism when she declared that violence in Maranhao had increased because the state had become richer in recent years. Though the state's per capita GDP has indeed improved, it remains the second poorest in Brazil.