News
PCC: A Prison from Which There Is No Escape
It was a Tuesday night, January 14, 2020, after “free time” when prison...
Groups
Family of the North – FDN
Family of the North (Familia do Norte - FDN) has long been Brazil’s...
Personalities
Marcelo Fernando Pinheiro Veiga, alias “Piloto”
Marcelo “Piloto” Pinheiro was considered one of the Brazilian...
Groups
Red Command
The Red Command (Comando Vermelho) is Brazil’s oldest criminal group, created in a Rio de Janeiro prison in the 1970s as a self-protection group for prisoners. It started out with low-level crime like muggings and bank robbery, but in the 1980s the group moved into the cocaine trade, working with Colombian drug cartels and taking on a social leadership role in many of Rio’s favelas.
First Capital Command – PCC
The First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital - PCC) was inspired by the Red Command (Comando Vermelho). Both criminal organizations were formed by prisoners as self-protection groups in Brazil’s brutal prison system. The PCC arose in São Paulo in the 1990s, and has fought a bloody ongoing feud with police in the city. The group, now the largest and best-organized criminal organization in Brazil, is believed to have members in two-thirds of the country's states, and controls drug trafficking routes between Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay.