Prisoners from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil play soccer on a barbed wire encircled court. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Prisoners from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil play soccer on a barbed wire encircled court.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
A prison guard handcuffs an inmate from Cell 13. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
A prison guard handcuffs an inmate from Cell 13.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Cell 13 players warm up inside their cell. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Cell 13 players warm up inside their cell.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
The team from Cell 13 of the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. April 2014. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
The team from Cell 13 of the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. April 2014.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
The guards from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. April 2014. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
The guards from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. April 2014.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Prisoner portrait from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Prisoner portrait from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Prisoner portrait from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Prisoner portrait from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Guard portrait from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Guard portrait from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Guard portrait from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Guard portrait from the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
The soccer court inside the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
The soccer court inside the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Prisoners practice inside their cell at the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Prisoners practice inside their cell at the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
All the games are played barefoot because it's a sand court. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
All the games are played barefoot because it's a sand court.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Inmates juggle in the Geraldo Beltrão kitchen. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Inmates juggle in the Geraldo Beltrão kitchen.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
The winning inmate team played a team made up of prison guards for the grand championship. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
The winning inmate team played a team made up of prison guards for the grand championship.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Cell 9 v. Cell 15 in the penitentiary championship. April 4, 2014. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Cell 9 v. Cell 15 in the penitentiary championship. April 4, 2014.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Cell 15’s Ivonaldo Rodrigues da Silva Filho, 24, has been incarcerated for six years for murder and theft. Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
Cell 15’s Ivonaldo Rodrigues da Silva Filho, 24, has been incarcerated for six years for murder and theft.
Photo: Nicolò Lanfranchi for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 - Football (June 2014)
For one week each year, the Geraldo Beltrão maximum security penitentiary in João Pessoa, Brazil holds a soccer tournament for the prisoners. Five-member teams from the various cells compete against each other on a barbed-wire-encircled sand court until there’s just one left standing.
The winning team members each get a box filled with rice, beans, and other basic food items. More importantly, though, the winning team also gets to play against the prison guards for the grand championship.
This year Italian photojournalist Nicolò Lanfranchi was there to document the tournament for Colors magazine, and he followed the prisoners as they trained and played.
“It’s an event that people take very seriously,” he says. “And it’s a good way to release tension.”
Lanfranchi’s photos are timely, as the World Cup starts this month in Brazil and his work raises questions about an overcrowded prison system and the vast sums of money Brazil is spending to host the event.
Nicolò Lanfranchi shot photos at the Geraldo Beltrão Penitentiary for COLORS magazine, issue no. 90 – Football (June 2014).
The article in Colors points out that since 2008, Brazil has spent $670 million dollars on prisons and prison upkeep as opposed to $3.5 billion on new soccer stadiums. At the moment there are 400,000 inmates living in prisons that are only meant to hold 260,000 people. Things are so bad a Brazilian judge proposed using the new World Cup stadium in Manaus as a temporary detention center for a nearby, overcrowded prison once the tournament is over.
The Geraldo Beltrão prison, where the tournament takes place, is overcrowded as well. Cells that were meant to hold seven people sometimes hold 15. Lanfranchi says the prison tournament is probably a response, at least in part, to these conditions. Prison officials want the prisoners to have the chance to get out and enjoy themselves, but they also get media attention.
“Someone at the prison is trying to make a name for themselves,” he says.
In the end it was players in Cell 15 this year who beat all the other prison teams and made it to that last game. Like some of the most gut-wrenching World Cup games of all time–Italy and Brazil in 1994 and Italy and France in 2006–the prison guard game ended in penalty kicks. Lanfranchi says he can’t remember the final score, but he does remember that the guards won.
“The prisoners were pretty sad,” he says. “They really wanted to kick the guards’ asses.”
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