Brazil moves to prevent Covid-19 from entering prisons

As we have covered many times on The Brazilian Report, Brazil’s prison system is a cesspool of human rights violations. Famously, one former Justice Minister said he’d rather die than spend a night in a Brazilian jail. These facilities are overcrowded, have little to no health conditions—making the prospect of letting the novel coronavirus enter prisons a doomsday scenario.

Supreme Court Justice Marco Aurélio Mello has asked all criminal execution judges to assess the real need to keep prisoners behind bars, as opposed to granting them parole. While the move must first be confirmed by the rest of the court, it is a move toward putting fewer people in jail.

For Justice Mello, only people who are in prison for violent crimes or...