VIDEO footage of notorious drug traffickers nonchalantly smoking marijuana and making calls on their mobile phones as guards watch inside a high security jail has embarrassed the Government of President da Silva and prompted calls to speed the reform of Brazil’s prisons.

The images of inmates at the Bangu jail in Rio de Janeiro openly smoking and dealing drugs in the prison courtyard were broadcast on Globo TV’s Fantastico programme. It also showed drug barons apparently “making deals” on mobile phones, only days after prison authorities had installed a call-blocking device intended to stop the use of such phones in jails.

The Minister of Justice, Marcio Thomaz Bastos, called for a complete overhaul of the prison system, which he labelled disastrous and embarrassing. He blamed “failures which have existed for decades”.

President da Silva has pledged to make ambitious reforms in Brazil’s prisons, where 200,000 detainees are held in cells meant to house only a fraction of that number. He proposes to release petty thieves, but give stiffer sentences to serious criminals.

“Much of the problem is caused because we put too many small-time thieves in jail and cause overcrowding, and give the big-time criminals more leeway,” the president said.

The problems of severe overcrowding are compounded by an acute shortage of guards, a result of the meagre salaries on offer. The problems is particularly acute in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where drug gangs effectively run the prisons. Authorities have been forced to allow prisons to be divided up by rival gangs.

Moments after Fantastico broadcast its prison footage the director of the Vicente Piragibe wing of the vast Bangu prison complex, Constantino Viera Cokotods, was sacked.

“The state of our prisons is sick, and in a profound coma. We have to make it breathe again,” said Asterio Pereira dos Santos, the head of Brazil’s penitentiary administration.

His administration has also come under fire in the past week after the suspected beating to death of a Chinese businessman, who was found unconscious in a cell after being interrogated by prison guards. The case has forced Rio’s prison authorities to acknowledge that torture is widespread in prisons and police detention centres.

Six guards accused of torturing Chan Kim Chang, 46, and then leaving him to die, have been arrested. Mr Chang, who held dual Chinese and Brazilian nationality, was arrested at Rio airport for failing to declare $10,000 (£6,300) and pay taxes on the cash. Anonymous calls to a police hotline, however, claimed that the businessman was dragged away and imprisoned in order to force him to reveal details of his credit cards.

The guards at the Ary Franco penitentiary in Rio, where he was held, claim that Mr Chang caused his own head and body injuries in a fit of rage. But two months ago the local authorities had already received reports of routine torture practised at the prison and were accused of doing nothing to stop the practice.

One newspaper reported that even when Mr Chang lay in a coma in hospital, shortly before dying, he was cuffed to the hospital bed.

The dire shortcomings of Brazil’s prison system have also been highlighted in a string of daring escapes by drug traffickers.

In February 2002 three military policemen were sacked after apparently turning a blind eye to two break-outs from the Bangu complex, including that of the notorious drug baron Gevanildo Rodrigues da Silva, who hid in a food container.

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