# Brazilian prison and street groups: life on both sides of the wall ## Epigraph > “I was in prison, and ye came unto me”. > > Matthew 25:36, King James Version. The ethical meaning of care does not establish a particular visit as safe. ## What this article is about A prison wall divides spaces without ending every relationship. Someone detained still has relatives, obligations and needs; outside, people continue working, waiting, paying for travel and making decisions. Where a criminal group operates nearby, these relationships can receive an outside explanation: imprisonment supposedly means membership, and a relative's care means transmitting the organisation's will. The human history then disappears on both sides of the wall. Consider fictional adults Rafael, who is detained, and his sister Lia. She wants to support him and retain a life of her own. Institution, state, procedural position, guilt, membership, particular conduct, a request and a threat are unspecified. Neither person belongs to the real cases or research below. We determine no safe visit, refusal, approach, disclosure or exit for them; their story distinguishes care, participation and dependence. The article is limited to the named example of Primeiro Comando da Capital, PCC, a study of relatives in São Paulo and the description of the state Pena Justa plan. These are different sources and periods, rather than a complete chart of all Brazilian factions or present institutions. We consider prison origins, relationships with life outside and people whose possibilities exceed a simple division into free and unfree. ## I. Prison origins do not make every prisoner a participant The [OFAC release of 15 December 2021](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0535) places PCC's origins in São Paulo in the 1990s. Natália Lago's research describes it as a collective emerging in the state's male prisons. This provides a limited historical context. No precise founding date, complete archival history or present hierarchy of all groups is established here. Gaps are not filled by a general story about an unchanging prison code. An organisation's origins differ from each person's position in an institution. Sharing a cell, area or acquaintance does not settle membership, knowledge and conduct. Even the description prison group does not mean everyone detained relates identically to its demands. Location alone cannot allocate power, voluntariness, responsibility or possibilities for resistance in advance. Those questions remain about particular people rather than one presumed condition shared by all. PCC's history is also not the history of all Brazil. State, institution, period and source matter. Mentioning an influential organisation turns neither every neighbourhood into its territory nor every ordinary connection into management. Conversely, unestablished membership does not prove absence of pressure. Non-involvement and safety concern different questions requiring different grounds. One cannot supply the missing answer to the other simply because the distinction is inconvenient. Prison origins help us understand why relationships can continue beyond one room. They do not establish a single cause of every outside crime. Particular connections require questions about who acted, what they knew, what authority they held and under which conditions they decided. This does not automatically mitigate conduct. It prevents an organisation's name from replacing the content of the action being investigated or assigning everyone the same role. For Rafael, the distinction preserves his own biography. Being detained does not establish procedural position, guilt or affiliation that the fictional account leaves unspecified. Equally, humane concern alone does not declare him innocent. Individual consideration remains possible. Information about an environment helps raise questions without immediately answering every question about someone's life in their place or requiring their history to fit the most familiar account. ## II. Several sources of rules do not share one basis [Natália Lago's 2022 article](https://www.scielo.br/j/vb/a/Xm94zwYvPG6GJPZ9fHR8hrc/?lang=en), published in the collection in February 2023, examines imprisonment, gender and relatives' activism in São Paulo. It distinguishes administrative procedures, circulated guidelines attributed to PCC and relationships among visitors themselves. This is field research with a particular location, method and period, rather than a chart of every woman's present life or all Brazilian prisons. Several regulatory spheres do not become legally or ethically equal. A lawful institutional requirement, interpersonal arrangement, rumour and criminal instruction differ even when someone must consider them simultaneously. Their source, content and actual pressure still matter. The article offers no universal legal test requiring every reader to classify each situation alone. Recognising overlapping expectations does not resolve their authority or establish which conditions apply to a particular encounter. Someone might experience a demand as binding without knowing who formulated it. That establishes neither PCC authorship nor the safety of noncompliance. Rumour, attribution, instruction and actual conduct need distinguishing. Otherwise anxiety becomes evidence of authority the source has not established, or the unknown is dismissed as imaginary because no particular issuer can immediately be named. Both conclusions exceed what the available account shows. Several expectations may meet in one ordinary task for Lia. She wants to see her brother, satisfy lawful visiting requirements and avoid accepting an unclear role. No particular conflict or violation is specified. The possibility shows why goodwill is not the whole situation: wanting to support him does not determine external conditions, while a procedure's existence does not explain every separate demand's meaning or establish its lawfulness. The spheres' separateness matters for staff too. Working in a prison does not mean criminal-group participation, just as a lawful check is not abuse in itself. An official title nevertheless cannot justify arbitrary harm. Particular conduct and its basis need assessment regardless of the actor. We establish neither every employee's guilt nor every procedure's lawfulness from institutional type alone, or erase the distinction between legal duties and criminal instructions. ## III. Outside life is not an empty extension of the cell The [OFAC release of 1 July 2026](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0549) describes a particular PCC-linked financial network with Florida and São Paulo nodes and administrative action against named people and companies. This is a limited example of relationships outside prison and across countries. It is neither a full criminal record, convictions of every participant nor a chart of every Brazilian group's outside connections. The example does not establish knowledge by every company, employee or relative. Even where an agency names one person's kinship and a particular function, the account concerns that case. It cannot extend to all relatives. Lia's care for her brother becomes neither evidence of a financial role nor membership merely because an organisation has outside connections. A reported relationship between particular people does not make kinship generally incriminating. Outside, relationships also exist independently of detention. Lia's work, friends, plans and need for rest matter in themselves. Explaining everything through the role of a detained man's sister reduces her life to someone else's position again. Support may be an important part without acquiring authority to determine it entirely. Her own activities need not justify themselves only by their contribution to a relative's needs or to managing the prison's effects. Being outside does not mean complete freedom from consequences either. Someone can be legally free while considering pressure, costs or fear for a relative. None is established for Lia, but bars' absence does not rule them out. The comparison distinguishes formal location from actual ability to determine a particular action without declaring the positions identical. The difference between detention and freedom remains real even when relationships cross it. Possible constraints nevertheless do not automatically excuse every outside act. Care, a particular favour, knowledge of its purpose and actual pressure are different questions. Payment or its absence supplies no complete answer about lawfulness or voluntariness either. We establish no conduct here. The fictional account leaves room for assessment instead of assigning the predetermined role of accomplice or unquestionably uninvolved person before its circumstances are known. ## IV. Rafael remains a person with relationships and responsibility Someone detained may retain ordinary needs: being heard, knowing about family, understanding their position and dealing with daily conditions. Recognising these means neither endorsing a possible offence nor cancelling lawful punishment. Humane treatment and assessment of particular conduct can coexist. Neither requires proof of a flawless entire biography before the person's circumstances can matter. Care does not need to supply a verdict to have human significance. Lawful restrictions in administering punishment differ from criminal coercion. Detention nevertheless permits no arbitrary harm. These distinctions matter to Rafael's position, although applicable law and particular institutional conditions have not been researched here. The article establishes no authorised regime, individual case rights, appeal procedure or access to protection actually delivered. A general ethical distinction cannot supply these missing legal and practical conditions or a safe method for challenging them. Rafael may want connection with his sister without having authority over her whole life. Limited possibilities do not make any request an indisputable duty. Lia likewise need not treat asking itself as proof of manipulation. Particular content matters, and is unspecified. A relationship can continue while care and an endless requirement to comply remain distinct. Need and closeness do not explain every possible instruction in advance. Questions about conduct require distinguishing the moment of knowledge, actual possibilities and consequences for others. Later information cannot retroactively turn earlier ignorance into pretence. Earlier ignorance likewise does not settle everything that followed. Explaining circumstances is no complete justification, and acknowledging harm does not mean accepting every imposed interpretation of one's history. These questions may matter together without one being made the only permissible account. Nor is someone inside assigned a duty to prove dignity through dangerous resistance. No safe refusal, conversation, approach or departure from dependence is selected here. Ethical clarity differs from actual ability to act. Demanding public heroism from Rafael through a general idea of freedom ignores conditions whose consequences remain his to bear and which the example does not establish. The observer's conviction cannot carry those consequences for him. ## V. A relative has her own experience of prison from outside Lago considers relatives whose daily lives change around prison. Her study includes travel, waiting, costs and participation in public discussion of violations. These observations make visitors' own experience visible beyond carrying prisoners' accounts. This is bounded ethnography, rather than a measurement of every family's expenses or our check of a particular institution or service today. Its fieldwork and participants' accounts should retain their scope when used beyond the original setting. Lia can love her brother and grow tired of caring. Tiredness itself is no betrayal, while willingness does not prove unlimited resources. Her money, time and relationships matter too. We establish neither her spending nor assistance she must continue. The point is to keep the relative's own life from disappearing within somebody else's recognition of her kindness. Being valued for care need not make every other need irrelevant. When someone is seen only as an intermediary, her words may count only as news about another person. Lia also has experience of her own she may want to discuss or keep private. Attention need not be earned through turning an entire life into public testimony. In Lago's research, what can be said in a particular context involves tension. That finding is not a universal disclosure script or a demand to recreate the event. Family participation in a rights discussion does not constitute criminal membership. Adequate treatment can be demanded without declaring innocence or endorsing possible conduct. A public event likewise determines neither safety, competence nor every request's effectiveness. Lia is assigned no activist role, and no promise of protection through one correctly expressed testimony. Participation may matter without being either an obligation or evidence that a suitable outcome has already been secured. A relative's boundaries do not make her solely responsible for missing results. Neither wanting to help nor declining an unmanageable role guarantees another person's safety. Family becomes neither a compulsory exit service nor an authority over all a detained person's decisions. This can be acknowledged with humane concern, without requiring Lia to abandon her brother or accept every possible burden for him simply to prove that concern exists. ## VI. A request for support needs particular content An ordinary lawful request does not become criminal because someone detained makes it. Closeness and need nevertheless do not explain every instruction automatically. Supporting a person, the content of particular conduct and knowing its purpose differ. We give no list of suspicious objects, transfer methods or ways around prison rules. Such detail is unnecessary for the human question of a relationship's limits and would not establish the circumstances of a particular request. Lia might not understand a request while still wanting to help. Uncertainty is not consent already given; anxiety does not prove Rafael's criminal intention. His request might also be lawful but practically unmanageable for her. Lawfulness, voluntariness, possibility and ethical judgment differ. One answer should not quietly replace the others, especially when immediate proof of loyalty is expected. None is determined by the example's unstated content. Gratitude for earlier support creates no indefinite entitlement to future services. This applies both ways: need gives a detained person no unlimited authority, just as assistance gives a relative none. Particular good received can be acknowledged while questions about the next action remain open. A relationship becomes more precise when the past is not used to explain universally everything that might still be demanded or justify a role nobody actually agreed to. Understanding a boundary does not establish a safe way to express it. The article selects no refusal, negotiation, test of influence or disclosure as appropriate for everyone. Communication conditions, another person's dependence and consequences remain unknown. Lia acquires no duty to investigate a structure or test a threat's seriousness in order to name her relationship with her brother accurately. An analytical distinction does not remove the need to assess conditions separately. Mediation also differs from attentive friendship. Someone may want to listen without competence to resolve a legal question or negotiate. Declining an unfamiliar function proves no indifference, while good intention does not confirm every involvement as safe. Possible support requires actual conditions rather than a helper's conviction that they are right. The willingness to become involved and the ability to perform a particular task remain different matters. ## VII. A state programme preserves the difference between aim and result The [Brazilian justice ministry's Pena Justa page](https://www.gov.br/mj/pt-br/assuntos/sua-seguranca/seguranca-publica/pena-justa/pena-justa) presents 2025–2027 aims coordinated by SENAPPEN and CNJ. Conditions of punishment, social reintegration, security and attention to victims appear together. We read the plan's presentation, rather than the full plan, an implementation report or an individual assistance decision for Rafael and Lia. Those different documents and outcomes cannot be inferred merely from the programme's description. An aim differs from verified service availability. A state plan, an institution's work, accepting a request and actual protection are different results. Even an exact programme name shows neither inclusion of a particular person, access conditions met nor a desired decision taken. None is established here merely through the page's mention. An intended future change should retain that status until evidence supports a more particular outcome. Victims' position remains distinct. Better conditions in detention require no dismissal of their harm, while acknowledging harm grants no right to arbitrary humiliation of someone else. Dignity need not be a limited stock removed from one party to supply another. Individual responsibility and humane treatment can be considered together while retaining the actual differences between people's positions, needs and legal circumstances. Caring about one does not decide everything about the other. Reintegration is likewise not a single release event. Outside work, relationships and living conditions have their own content. A programme description does not show them restored or make a difficulty evidence of personal failure to use an available opportunity. Individual access, timing, payments, professionals, confidentiality and relatives' protection have not been checked. Promising such results would exceed the basis actually read, even when the aims sound relevant to the family. Finally, lawful administration of punishment is not equivalent to a criminal group's demands. The need for state security can be recognised without excusing every official action. Violations can be discussed without accusing every employee. Each question returns to a particular basis and act, rather than membership of a side declared good or bad beforehand. Institutional labels alone cannot do the work of assessing conduct and circumstances. ## VIII. Visiting someone and supporting one another In [Matthew 25:31–40](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025%3A31-40&version=KJV), visiting someone in prison belongs to the language of care. Our reading sees a person beyond a closed role. The passage determines no universal innocence and requires neither accepting every instruction, breaking law, dangerous contact, forgiveness nor self-sacrifice. An ethical relationship does not establish identical visiting procedures across institutions or verify any particular visit as safe. In [Seneca's Letter 95.51–53, Richard Gummere's translation](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_95), human relationships resemble a stone arch held through mutual support. The image makes assistance a relationship involving several people. It grants one participant no unlimited authority and assigns a relative no sole duty to guarantee safety. We do not inherit all the letter's ancient views of health, gender, society or punishment through using this particular comparison. These grounds belong to different traditions. Comparing them establishes no common law, treatment, visiting regime, immunity or available protection. It determines neither contact's safety nor other people's consent. Two connected questions matter: how to preserve humane regard for someone detained, and how to preserve a helper's own life. Neither should become the other's price. A moral image cannot fill in practical conditions that remain unexamined. Rafael and Lia need not immediately become calm or prove spiritual maturity through a proper formula. Fear, irritation or fatigue do not cancel their relationship's value or answer questions about conduct. Reflection helps when it clarifies, rather than requiring someone to look sufficiently compassionate to an observer. Ethical language should not become another demand for unknown risk in exchange for an outside verdict on their goodness. Mutual support does not require symmetry at every moment either. People's possibilities may differ. Unequal possibilities nevertheless do not erase one's boundaries or entitle another to decide everything. A relationship can acknowledge need while attending to both people's actual positions. The article measures neither person's worth by visit counts, assistance given or the speed at which they change circumstances. A difference in capacity is not itself unlimited permission. ## IX. Support is not a ruling on the entire history Helping Rafael, should he need it, does not require declaring him wholly exonerated. Helping Lia does not require treating her solely as a victim without choices of her own. Needing support is likewise no admission of guilt. Sympathy and individual fact-finding perform different tasks. This fiction determines neither an offence, punishment, immunity nor a legal outcome for the reader, and supplies no verdict through its choice of sympathetic protagonists. People harmed have needs of their own. Supporting someone detained or their family gives no right to demand their trust, forgiveness, contact or reconciliation. One party's intention does not establish repaired relationships. Hope for change can remain without being imposed as another person's duty or requiring a pleasing ending to something still continuing for them. Their consent cannot be inferred from a wish that everybody should now move on. No particular service, programme, payment, individual access, confidentiality, relatives' protection or legal outcome is confirmed for Rafael and Lia. No safe visit, approach, refusal, disclosure, mediation or exit is established. A contact found, request accepted and help delivered differ. Lago's AMPARAR account is not our verification of its present availability, conditions or results for this family. A research description cannot be presented as their actual access to assistance. Agreeing to talk does not mean consenting to distribute the entire history. Wanting to help creates no automatic authority to use another person's information as public testimony. Specific confidentiality rules remain unestablished. Conversation conditions and possible consequences need separate consideration. Someone need not earn attention through full disclosure to anyone claiming to be a suitable helper, without regard to their role or the circumstances of speaking. Legal help, material assistance and being heard are different services too. A public discussion may matter without being a decision already delivered. Participants in Lago's study regarded the hearing as successful; that is their assessment of an event, rather than our check that every demand was implemented. Further work can be supported while hope, another party's commitment and an actual result remain distinct instead of being counted as the same achievement. ## X. Release leaves a question about further life Suppose Rafael later becomes free. This is a separate conditional stage, not a confirmed outcome or evidence that every dependence has disappeared. It promises no rapid restoration of trust, work, reputation or closeness. New aims may coexist with continuing consequences. Wanting ordinary life neither closes the past nor instantly clarifies every relationship. A change in location and a change in all conditions should not be treated as one event. Lia need not retain every old role without reconsideration because her brother is released. Their relationship may need new questions about support and independence. Care need not have been mistaken, nor difficulty prove earlier help pointless. Different stages have different content. They can want closeness without knowing its current conditions. Neither person's hopes alone determine what the other can now give or which arrangements should continue. Belonging and earlier assistance do not make every old connection safe or require immediate contact as proof of loyalty. One dangerous connection likewise does not establish equal danger from every acquaintance. Memory, present circumstances and another person's consent to continue relationships remain distinct. The article selects no safe return and does not treat longing for a familiar world as evidence of wanting renewed criminal participation. Familiarity itself answers neither question. One's activities can be ordinary: work, friendship, promises and care for oneself and others. None must become a public story of heroic rebirth. Not every difficulty means returning under former control, and not every improvement means support is unnecessary. Different parts of life can be assessed separately without an examination in final reform administered by everyone encountered. A person need not supply one finished status to explain all their continuing experience. History on both sides becomes clearer when roles do not absorb people. Detention, kinship, criminal organisation, state institution and particular conduct remain distinct subjects. This preserves room for responsibility and assistance without unlimited authority. Further life can remain an open question of one's own relationships and aims even when earlier consequences persist. The wall's significance need not be denied for a person's life to exceed it. ## What this means in practice Distinguish organisational information from a conclusion about someone. PCC is a limited named example here. Administrative releases 2021/2026, ethnography with observations from a particular period and a 2025–2027 plan presentation differ. They supply neither a full case, every faction's current hierarchy nor a decision about Rafael's and Lia's roles. Date, method and subject limit what can be concluded, even when several sources concern the same broad environment. The fiction leaves separate questions: what position someone occupies, what they ask, what another person understands, what happened and which possibilities and limits are known. Answers are unspecified. Kinship and care do not replace participation, while appealing to care does not determine every request as lawful. An incomplete history need not become a complete verdict. Asking precisely is different from pretending the missing circumstances have already been established. A lawful regime restriction, interpersonal arrangement, rumour, abuse and criminal coercion differ. Multiple rules do not acquire equal authority through coexistence. The reader is given no duty to investigate a structure, test a threat or circumvent procedure. Safe visit, refusal, approach, disclosure, mediation and exit are unselected here; particular conditions require separate assessment. Understanding the categories does not itself determine what is possible in a particular institution or relationship. Assistance has an actual result. Service, programme, payment, access, confidentiality, relatives' protection and legal outcome for this family remain unconfirmed. Ethical reflection, an association study, a state plan's name and an accepted request are not delivered protection. A relative acquires no duty to carry everything alone, while a person harmed acquires no duty of trust or forgiveness for someone else's restoration. Both retain their own circumstances and consent. Release and the disappearance of all dependence are different outcomes. The later stage is conditional; rapid restoration is not promised. Someone can retain memory, care and aims without considering every former connection safe or proving loyalty through immediate return. Precision leaves relationships room to change without requiring the entire history to be declared complete through one event. Responsibility and further life can remain meaningful alongside consequences that have not ended. ## Key quotation > “Our relations with one another are like a stone arch”. > > Seneca, Letter 95.53, Richard M. Gummere. The context is mutual support, not unlimited authority over someone else. ## Connections between traditions | Source | A question for reading | Limit of the comparison | | --- | --- | --- | | Matthew 25:31–40, KJV | How can we see a person beyond the detained role? | No verdict of innocence or duty to follow every instruction, break law, make dangerous contact, forgive or sacrifice oneself. | | Seneca 95.51–53, Gummere | How does mutual support preserve several human lives? | No unlimited authority or relative's sole duty to guarantee safety. | ## Primary sources and research 1. OFAC. [Treasury Uses New Sanctions Authority to Combat Global Illicit Drug Trade](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0535), 15 December 2021. Action context and full Brazil/PCC section read, not the entire release or current list. 2. OFAC. [Treasury Sanctions Brazilian Criminal Network…](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0549), 1 July 2026. Main text read; not full criminal files or everyone's outcome. 3. Natália Lago. [Reports of a struggle: Prison, gender, and activism in an association of prisoners’ relatives](https://www.scielo.br/j/vb/a/Xm94zwYvPG6GJPZ9fHR8hrc/?lang=en). Vibrant 19, 2022; collection publication 13 February 2023; DOI 10.1590/1809-43412022v19e602. English translation Jeffrey Hoff. Full main text, specified notes and metadata read; not every cited book/case. Page states CC Attribution; licence version and third-party quotations' rights not separately researched. 4. MJSP. [Pena Justa](https://www.gov.br/mj/pt-br/assuntos/sua-seguranca/seguranca-publica/pena-justa/pena-justa). 2025–2027 aims presentation read; not full plan, implementation report or a particular available service. Main passage supplies no publication date. 5. Seneca. [Moral letters to Lucilius 95, Richard M. Gummere](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_95). Displayed context, especially 95.51–53, read; not the whole letter or Latin original. Attribution checked on the [collection title page](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius). 6. [Matthew 25:31–40, King James Version](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025%3A31-40&version=KJV). All ten verses read in this version. Checked 20 October 2026. Short quotations are attributed. Two comparison rows correspond to two traditions actually read. International republication rights for full versions/releases have not been established separately. Particular services, visiting conditions and safe approaches have not been checked. ## Tags Brazil, PCC, detention, prison groups, relatives, visits, care, dependence, responsibility, further life. ## About the authors Andrey Zarinsh is the author and founder of United Wisdom. He explores inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh. Maria Evilkut is a co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside research, she seeks to test these ideas in practice and observe how principles of unity and mutual understanding work in real relationships between people and cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.