“By sending people to traditional prisons we are often subjecting them to inhuman punishments, and in consequence, they leave prisons worse than when they arrived and commit even more serious crimes. After so many years working on the application of criminal law, the APAC method appeared to me, as a solution to all the problems we face in the prison system in Brazil. It is a hope for the convicts resocialization”, affirmed Eiko Araki, State Prosecutor of Rondônia. “It was very difficult to make the government management of my state accept the APAC method, but sometimes it takes a little craziness to go against what everyone thinks is normal, to bet on a totally unthinkable method,” she added.
Eiko also said that in Ji-Parana, the second most populous city of Rondônia, with more than 150,000 inhabitants, the judicial authorities were resistant about the APAC method. After a detailed presentation by AVSI Brasil and FBAC in a seminary in Rondônia, sponsored by the Public Prosecutor of Rondônia, the concept has progressed and the methodology is being recognized as a good alternative for these authorities.
According to FBAC’s executive director, Valdeci Ferreira “the funds provide by this project will allow a series of actions to take a leap in quality, especially in states that seek to improve its interventions for better rehabilitation rates and reduction of criminal recurrence.”
The expectation is that the results generated in the project will enable the expansion of the experience and APAC methodology as a public policy in Brazil, strengthening human rights and political participation and the involvement of civil society.