“There is enough data to confirm the barbarism committed within the prison systems of almost every country in Latin America. Nevertheless, reports of torture, deaths, inmate health conditions, incarceration rates, and prison capacity continue to increase: since 2000, the prison population has grown by 74% in Central America and 200% in South America. To put a face to these figures and restore some humanity to the millions of people deprived of liberty and dignity, Brazilian photographers Thiago Dezan, Erick Dau, and Francisco Proner, members of the Farpa agency, visited 18 prisons throughout the continent. This is what they saw.” - Miguel Vilela
Between 2018 and 2023, Erick Dau, Francisco Proner and Thiago Dezan, visited ten countries to document the reality of the penitentiary system in the Americas. Overcrowding, widespread diseases, torture and an endless nightmare. The reality of prisons in the region cannot be described in words. This project is an attempt to demonstrate it in images.
To the outside world, the inmate is just a number: their cost to the state, their registration number, their case number, criminal code, sentence length - a statistic that justifies all forms of violence and discrimination.
Inside the walls, the prisoner is just another human being, with a story that few people are willing to hear.
No prison visited during the course of this project can be considered a model, where those deprived of freedom have rights such as education and work with respect for dignity. The impression is that one prison begins where the other ends, they are extensions of the same project. Although in different countries, all prisons are one, a place where humanism has no value.