Interesting first-person account on the BBC site:

The first step the authorities need to take is to block the prisoners from using mobile phones to direct the violence on the streets.

That prompted me to do a little research, which led to a report from Prison Review in 2002 that suggests cell-phones were used by inmates to coordinate attacks back then as well:

Officials in California’s facilities regularly report problems with their inmate population using cell phones to conduct “gang business” from behind bars. January’s prison riots in Brazil – which began simultaneously across five facilities in and around Sao Paulo and left several hundred dead and wounded – were coordinated using cell phones. The inmate’s strategy of synchronised riots – only possible with real-time communications – was deliberately designed to cripple the state’s single incident response team.

And while these reports seem to indicate prison cells (pun intended) run amok, Amnesty International provides the following background to police treatment of prisoners and riots in Sao Paulo:

In June Colonel Ubiratan Guimarães, a former high-ranking military police officer, was convicted on charges in connection with the massacre of 111 detainees in the Carandiru detention centre following a riot in 1992. In a historic decision, the jury found him to be responsible for São Paulo’s military police ”shock troops” and that the troops entered the prison with the prior intention of committing as much harm as possible. He was sentenced to 632 years’ imprisonment, but was released pending hearing of his appeal. A further 105 military policemen were awaiting trial for their part in the massacre at the end of 2001. The São Paulo authorities later announced their intention to close Carandiru prison by early 2002.

Further reading on the subject revealed that

A Sao Paulo state appeals overturned his conviction on Wednesday [February 15, 2006] after Mr Guimaraes’ lawyers argued that he was acting on his superiors’ orders.

Could the riots be related to the court decision on Guimaraes? Many articles, such as this one, suggest that prisoners became highly organized in response to attacks by police in 1992. And yet no one seems to be making the connection between the prisoner organization and the recent court procedings about those attacks. The BBC quote “officials” who suggest that prisoners are reacting to “the decision of the state government’s move to isolate its leaders in different prisons.” Something tells me these isolation plans aren’t worthy of a riot on their own, especially when prisoners clearly are able to maintain cell-phone communication and relationships with outside elements. Maybe I’m missing something, but a recent ruling on the police leader charged with the massacre of prisoners seems very related…