O meio ambiente prisional brasileiro e a saúde do preso : um estudo no presídio estadual de Bento Gonçalves

Abstract

The Brazilian penitentiary system is in crisis. This crisis includes a lack of minimum conditions of health and re-socialization, as the Brazilian prisons don’t give any positive effect to the convict. The federal Constitution says that everyone is entitled to a healthy and balanced environment, where you can enjoy equality and human dignity. However, we know that this does not apply to individuals who are incarcerated. The convict is molded by the system, becoming hypocrisy to think the individual will be back to the society re-socialized. The State did not give him/her any condition of dignity, healthy, or a healthy and balanced environment. Thus, there is way to this individual returning to society as a person willing to start a new life, and yes, he/she will keep the career of crimes. Regarding on the Law of Penal Execution, the health care of the convict should be preventive and curative, including medical, pharmaceutical and dental assistance. The harsh prison conditions, overcrowding, and no conditions of environmental health and human dignity, coupled with lack of public policies contribute to the high relapse rate, making the prisoners return to society more brutalized with a revenge feeling and not re-socialized. The goal is to propose a new debate, bringing up that good and worthy environmental conditions in prisons can collaborate with the social reintegration of the convicts. In this context, the right to health will be examined as a fundamental right to health, which equates worthy life to healthy life, because we do not imagine that unhealthy living conditions are accepted as contents of a worthy life. The prison environment violates human rights - violates prisoner’s health - health is everyone's right and duty of the State, as provided by the Constitutional Charter, and this right, it is unfortunately not reaching the convicts. Finally, we study the environment and health of prison’s convicts in Bento Gonçalves’s State Prision, analyzing in detail the routine of the prison, its shortcomings, which are provided assistance in law that are provided to inmates and those in which state is ineffective and void.