Jailed Brazil gangsters chat on cell phones daily

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Family visits in Sao Paulo prisons only take place once a week but jailed Brazilian gangsters chat on their contraband cell phones every day.

Smuggled cell phones are used to keep in contact with families but also to direct criminal operations outside the penitentiary walls -- such as the gangster offensive unleashed in Sao Paulo in the past week.

Godofredo Bittencourt, chief of the anti-organized crime police unit, said the mobile phone has become "deadlier than the gun" in Brazilian prisons.

The wives of two members of the First Command of the Capital (PCC) criminal gang said they had easy telephone contact with their imprisoned husbands until a few days ago.

"Normally they call, a number appears and we know it's from the inside," said one of the women, a 32-year-old, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity.

Her husband has spent 12 years behind bars for robbery and murder. She and the other woman, 18, who has the photo of her jailed husband on her mobile phone screen, visit their spouses weekly.

"How often do I speak to him? Every day," she said.

The prison is a maximum-security penitentiary and cell phones are banned.

But PCC leaders in prison used mobile phones to give the orders for a wave of attacks in Sao Paulo city and state in which about 150 people have been killed since last Friday.

Police said the gang ordered the attacks in retaliation for the transfer of jailed gang leaders and members to a remote high-security prison. Related uprisings broke out in dozens of prisons across the state to demand better conditions.

PRISONERS DON'T CHARGE

Among the rules imposed by the PCC in Sao Paulo state prisons is one that regulates communications. A prisoner who has a cell phone can never charge another for the phone use.