In this episode, we talk to Ivana David, a Brazilian judge who has had a front-row seat to the creation and the evolution of the region’s largest criminal organization, o Primeiro Comando da Capital, or PCC, as its known for its Portuguese acronym. The judge has spent her life trying to combat the forces responsible for the group’s incredible rise to power and has some unexpected takeaways from that journey.

In-Depth

Some of the most notorious gangs in Latin America got their start in prisons. They have since become the base from which they can coordinate criminal activities; pay bribes to police, politicians, judges, and prosecutors; and launch full-on, sophisticated assaults on rivals and the state.

These types of operations have become all too familiar in the Americas, from the United States to Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. At InSight Crime, we’ve tracked criminal dynamics in all of these places, and we’ve found they all have something in common: some of the most important leaders are in jail and often the most powerful criminal groups run their operations from their prison cells.

Nowhere is this more true than in Brazil, and perhaps no one knows this better than Judge Ivana David, who has been working in the Brazilian judicial system for over 30 years. For the fifth episode of our podcast, we spoke to her about the rise of the PCC, Primeiro Comando da Capital, or the First Capital Command, from a handful of prison kidnappers and bank robbers to the most powerful gang in the southern hemisphere.