University of São Paulo: OAB and the Center for the Study of Violence discuss the 30th anniversary of the Carandiru massacre

Last Sunday, October 2, marked exactly three decades of the Carandiru Massacre, one of the most brutal episodes ever to take place in the Brazilian prison system, which resulted in the death of at least 111 men, imprisoned at the time in Complexo do Carandiru, in São Paulo. , with no prisoners. Starting this Monday, the 3rd, a series of face-to-face events begins, in a free program with different options each day, which continues until Saturday, the 8th, organized by the São Paulo Section of the Brazilian Bar Association ( OAB-SP), through its Criminal and Penitentiary Policy Commission, with the support of dozens of civil society organizations and movements, including the Center for the Study of Violence (NEV) at USP.

Right at the opening of the week, in an activity held on the morning of the 3rd, at the São Paulo City Council, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, co-founder of NEV, will be present at the table entitled Inventário do Massacre do Carandiru. The activity counts on the presence of Marina Dias, president of the Criminal and Penitentiary Policy Commission of the OAB-SP, Maria Laura Canineu, director of the Brazil office in the Division of the Americas of Human Rights Watch, Maíra Rocha Machado, professor who coordinates the Carandiru project It’s Not a Thing of the Past, at the Center for Studies on Crime and Punishment of the Faculty of Law of FGV-SP, Maurício Monteiro, survivor of the massacre and founder of the YouTube channel Prisioneiro 84.901, Deise Benedito, former expert of the National Mechanism of Preventing and Combating Torture, and Belisario dos Santos Jr., member of the International Commission of Jurists and Founder of the Arns Commission. To watch the broadcast of the opening table, access the Prestes Maia virtual auditorium, of the São Paulo City Council, at this link .

On Thursday, 6th, at 9:30 am, at Cidade Universitária, USP’s Butantã campus, NEV organizes a roundtable entitled Interrupted Lives: Youth and Mass Incarceration , mediated by NEV’s vice-coordinator, Bruna Gisi, with the participation of Nice Couto, Maria Cristina Gonçalves Vicentin, Lucelia Maria da Silva, João Marcos Buch, Priscila Naves Tardelli and Aline Santiago da Cruz. The activity takes place at the Department of Sociology and Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at USP, in Auditorium 8.

On Saturday, in the afternoon, the program will end with an outdoor activity, at Parque da Juventude, in São Paulo.

To learn more and register, free of charge, in each of the activities, it is necessary to access the links in the Sympla system, as indicated below:

Table 2: Exhibition and debate about the film Deus e o Diabo em Cima da Muralha , Monday, 10/3, 18:30, at OAB SP – Sede Secional ( learn more and sign up )

Table 3: (In) Visibility of the Prison System: What Changed Since Carandiru?, Tuesday, 10/4, 9:30 am, at OAB SP – Sede Secional

Table 4: Cine-Debate: film Bagatela , Tuesday, 10/4, at 7pm, at CDHEP – Center for Human Rights and Popular Education in Campo Limpo ( learn more and sign up )

Table 5: Contemporary Aspects on the Prison System and Police/State Violence, Wednesday, October 5th, at the São Paulo Resistance Memorial ( learn more and sign up )

Table 6: Cine-Debate: film Prisoneiro da Grade de Ferro , Wednesday, 10/5, 6pm, at Largo São Francisco ( learn more and sign up )

Table 7: Interrupted Lives: Youth and Mass Incarceration , Thursday, 10/6, 9:30 am, at USP’s Butantã campus ( learn more and register )

Table 8: Cine-Debate: film Sem Pena , Thursday, 10/6, at 7pm, at Ocupação 9 de Julho ( learn more and sign up )

Table 9: Restorative Justice as a Tool for Building the Future, Friday, 10/7, at 10 am, at Largo General Osório, 66 – Santa Ifigênia ( learn more and sign up )


“The effort to give voices to those who did not speak”
“It is repeated again, October 2nd falls on election day. Obviously not just any election, we are talking about two political projects in dispute, one that defends state violence and a project that is built on democratic bases. We really need to remember that day, say ‘that’s what it’s all about’, it’s a project that defends that and a project that goes in the opposite direction, that denounces that.” The statement is from lawyer Marina Dias, executive director of the Institute for the Defense of the Right to Defense and president of the Criminal and Penitentiary Policy Commission of the OAB/SP, for the new NEV podcast called As Prisões e as Decadas: Carandiru 30 Years Later.

The project was officially launched on September 30, 2022, to address issues related to the research agenda on prisons based on the memory of the Carandiru Massacre, which turned 30 this Sunday. Listen to the first episode, available on Spotify and several other podcast platforms, and follow the NEV channels to receive alerts for the next ones:


In the first episode of the series, which is expected to continue until the end of this year, lawyer and activist Valdênia Paulino, Law professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas Maíra Rocha Machado, professor Guilherme de Almeida from the USP Law School and professor Marcos César Alvarez, coordinator of the NEV, are interviewed by researchers Gustavo Higa and Gorete Marques, from NEV, and Isabela Cunha from the USP Law School.

“Official data bring 111 deaths, but we believe the number is even higher. We are talking about young men who had small children, we are talking about a life perspective of at least 50 years taken from the victims of the Carandiru Massacre”, begins Valdênia Paulino, who also relives, in the conversation, her experience of caring for the families of men prisoners, some of them in Pavilion 9, on that election afternoon in São Paulo.

Memories, re-readings, reflections and the call for an agenda to keep the history and meaning of this massacre alive. These are the topics of this first episode, in which activities already carried out on the subject are also mentioned, as well as those that start on Monday morning, 3, articulated by the OAB/SP and dozens of partners, among them the NEV. Access the complete schedule of events held in the week of October 3rd to 8th .

The episode also kicks off the call for activities for the sixth edition of the Prison Research Seminar , held by NEV in partnership with the National Association for Human Rights, Research and Graduate Studies (Andhep), scheduled for the end of November. , whose thread will also serve for the themes of the next episodes of the podcast.