Brazil: Flávio Bolsonaro promises 500,000 prison places inspired by the Salvadoran model

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the Liberal Party's presidential candidate and a key rival to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil's upcoming October elections, met with El Salvador's justice and public security minister, Gustavo Villatoro, on Sunday in São Paulo. Bolsonaro, who intends to incorporate measures inspired by President Nayib Bukele's security policy into his campaign programme, announced his intention to create 500,000 prison places over four years, as well as the construction of five federal maximum-security prisons in a complex named "Treva."

The plan also calls for a separate Ministry of Public Security from the Justice Ministry, with resources and intelligence transfers to states and municipalities, and the classification of two Brazilian criminal organizations, Primeiro Comando da Capital and Comando Vermelho, as terrorist groups. Bolsonaro stated that there are few prisoners in Brazil, and there should be more due to weak legislation.

He proposed minimum sentences of eight years for mobile phone theft. Brazil currently has 964,074 people in detention, a 6% increase from the previous year, placing it as the third-largest in the world in absolute terms, following the United States and China. Among these inmates is his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a sentence for attempting a coup.

The meeting, which lasted around an hour at a São Paulo hotel, also saw the participation of other candidates from the Liberal Party, such as Renan Santos and Romeu Zema.