Brazil Prison where top dog ‘chaveiros’ sell crack cocaine, charge taxes, gang rape, murder rivals and even have their own keys

Daily Mail gives us an insight on Jails in Brazil's Pernambuco state are lawless dens of iniquity being run by inmates who sell crack cocaine to prisoners and murder anyone who owes them money, an investigation has revealed.

 Inmates who do not have money to buy a 'barraco' - or private bunker - sleep in a corridor in the Curado prison complex

Bosses in the state's overcrowded prisons are frightened of inmates and give the most dangerous ones called 'chaveiros' - or 'keyholders' - control over their cell block for them to 'maintain order'.

The authorities give the job to convicted murderers, rapists and drug dealers because they 'command respect from fellow inmates', a jailbird told charity Human Rights Watch (HRW), who reported on the four Pernambuco prisons, where there is one guard for 31 inmates.

It found chaveiros-run jails are hell holes where disease is rife, vulnerable ones are gang raped and relatives outside are blackmailed into paying off inmates' drug debts.

37 prisoners share a tiny cell in PJALLB prison in Recife (pictured), Pernambuco, while the 'chaveiros' - the inmates chosen to rule over them - live in spacious rooms with TVs and bathrooms

While inmates rot in the cramped cells they share with dozens of other men, chaveiros live in spacious private rooms with their own TVs, fridges, fans and bathrooms, and employ prisoners as personal servants, known as 'chegados'.

Prisoners are made to pay a weekly tax of between five to 15 reais - around 80p to £8 - and anyone who cannot keep up with payments is assaulted or killed by the chaveiros' prison gang.

These drug lords also make money by selling the prisoners crack cocaine - smuggled in for them by guards and police officers - and forcing their families on the outside to pay their debt.

A street-merchant called Sandra said a keyholder rang her from a smuggled mobile phone and ordered her to pay off her son's drug debt, saying 'Either you pay or you buy a coffin for your son.'

Drug lords: These men are known as keyholders (pictured, the keyholder of Pavilion 7 in PJALLB prison)

Sandra gave him her television, which she was paying off in installments. She told HRW: 'I sold everything I had.'

Keyholders also abuse their power by selling and renting bunks known as 'barracos' to prisoners for between £100 and £330.

Regina, whose name was changed for security reasons, said she paid £330 for her 20-year-old son, who was sentenced to four years for possessing cannabis worth £9.

'I gave the money to the keyholder myself,' she said, and added that her son lost the cubicle when the keyholder later 'renovated' the area. 

Daily Mail