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TODAY:

Wave of violence in Brazil's overcrowded prison system.

A child in the throes of a drug addiction tests a parent's pride, patience and love in extreme ways.

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Brazil's crime and ultraviolence

An explosion of violence inside Brazilian prisons has seen at least 55 inmates murdered over the past two days, stabbed to death with sharpened toothbrushes or strangled with bedsheets, sometimes in front of visiting family .

The killing spree — apparently the result of infighting among members of Família do Norte (The Northern Family) , the country's third-largest drug gang — started Sunday at a jail in Manaus with a riot that left 15 dead.

Forty more died yesterday at three other facilities in the same northern city.

Relatives of inmates demand more information about their loved ones on Monday outside the Anisio Jobim Prison Complex in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil. (Edmar Barros/Associated Press)

The prison massacres recall a period at the beginning of 2017 when at least 120 inmates died in several weeks of bloody confrontations between rival gangs, which started with the decapitation and evisceration of 56 prisoners in Manaus, all captured on cellphone video.

Brazil has the third-largest prison population in the world , behind the United States and China, with close to 800,000 people crammed into jails that were designed to hold half as many .

Murder and mayhem are commonplace inside the system, and drug gangs find few impediments to running their outside business from behind the walls.

An officer consoles a relative of an inmate in front of a prison complex in Amazonas on Monday. (Bruno Kelly/Reuters)

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's far-right president, swept to power last fall vowing to both crack down on crime and regain control of the country's jails. And his government recently announced plans to spend close to $400 million US to add as many as 20,000 more prison cells .

But the other part of Bolsonaro's crime-busting strategy is to fill the graveyards. A "good criminal is a dead criminal," he declared on the campaign trail , promising to make it easier for police to shoot-to-kill.

Officers are following his lead. In Rio de Janeiro, police killed 558 suspects over the first four months of this year — almost five per day — putting them on track for their highest body count since statistics were first disclosed in 1998.

Human rights groups say many of the police operations are now just excuses to carry out summary executions.

Armed police block a road during a protest against President Jair Bolsonaro's deep education cuts in Sao Paulo on May 23. (Victor R. Caivano/Associated Press)

Bolsonaro has also made it easier for citizens to arm themselves, signing decrees to loosen gun ownership rules and drastically increase the amount of ammunition that permit-holders can buy each year .

The measures seem to be having some effect.

The national murder rate has fallen substantially — down 25 per cent so far this year, on the heels of a 13 per cent decline in 2018 — although, with more than 50,000 killings each year, there is still a long way to go. And there has also been a sharp reduction in violent crime in major cities like Rio and Sao Paulo .

"We're on the right track," Wilson Witzel, a military veteran and Bolsonaro ally who is now governor of Rio State, recently proclaimed on Twitter . "We're going to continue preserving the lives and liberty of our families."

However, that doesn't mean that Brazilians are all that thrilled with Bolsonaro's Trumpian approach to country's complex problems.

A student wears a sticker that reads 'Bolsonaro Out' during the May 23 demonstration. (Victor R. Caivano/Associated Press)

His approval rating has undergone a dramatic slide since he officially took office in January, with 36 per cent of voters now calling his government "bad or awful," more than double the number in February.

And there's more political trouble ahead, as Brazil shows signs of sliding back into recession amid rising unemployment and questions over Bolsonaro's planned economic reforms.

The new president is even finding that there are some surprising limits to his crime crackdown.

Yesterday a judge ruled that the man who stabbed Bolsonaro during a September campaign rally — inflicting a life-threatening wound to his stomach and causing him to lose 40 per cent of his blood — was not responsible for his actions due to mental health issues .

The attacker, Adélio Bispo de Oliveira — who told police he was carrying out "God's orders" — will instead be confined to a psychiatric hospital.

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A mother's torment

Senior reporter Bonnie Allen reflects on a mother's love, and her limits, when a child becomes addicted to drugs.

Frustration. Heartbreak. Fear.

All emotions that I expected to hear from the mothers of drug-addicted teens and young adults, as we spent hours interviewing parents about their inability to find long-term treatment in the public health system.

What I didn't anticipate was that mothers would share their sense of failure and innermost feelings of shame and guilt.

To have a child in the throes of a drug addiction tests a parent's pride, patience and, yes, love, in a way other parents couldn't possibly imagine. As the mother of two toddlers, I hadn't considered it before — but their brave honesty forced me to.

"I felt like a horrible parent," Saskatoon mother Stacey Bereza said, reflecting on the realization after four years that her son had been snorting pills since he was 16. "Dumb, that I didn't see this. It was happening right under my nose. How did I not know? I felt like I failed as a mom."

Stacey Bereza's son Kaden as a child. His problems with drugs started when he was 16 years old, she says. (Stacey Bereza)

Regina mother Ronni Nordal is convinced that she enabled her son, Andrew, to feed his cocaine and meth addiction by overlooking all the times that he lied to her, stole from her, and bullied her. She paid his bills and made excuses for him.

She remembers seeing him sleep on the couch and flop around like a piece of bacon frying in a pan, and thinking, "That's a funny way to sleep. He must have a sleep disorder." Only now does she realize that he was going through withdrawal from crystal methamphetamine.

"I didn't cause it, and I couldn't cure it, and I couldn't control it. But, damn, if I had quit babying him and giving him everything he asked for, demanded, he would have had to make some tough choices early on," Nordal said during an hour-long interview at her home.

Ronni Nordal's son, Andrew, as a child. She regrets that as he grew up and developed problems with drugs, she didn't try more ways to try and address it. (Ronni Nordal )

Both Nordal and Bereza reached a point when they were ready to cut their adult sons out of their lives. Bereza says she told her son Kaden, "I'm not going to watch you kill yourself."

Judy Richardson wiped away tears as she described the torment of hating who her son had become when he did drugs.

Judy Richardson describes the anguish of loving her adult son and also hating what he becomes when he's using drugs. 0:45

"They're chronic liars," she says. "It's testing. It's so hard. But it's your kid, and he will be until the day I die. And I'll always help him. If he wants help, I'll help him. And he seems to want it."

Bereza, Nordal and Richardson all paid tens of thousands of dollars to send their adult sons to British Columbia to receive long-term treatment at privately run facilities. It's an expensive gamble, and one that The National digs into tonight.

- Bonnie Allen

READ: These parents went into debt to get their children private, long-term drug treatment

WATCH: The National's story about the challenges and sacrifices faced by parents seeking help for their drug-addicted adult sons, tonight on CBC Television and streamed online

A few words on ...

Running from the outside.

No party, no party resources and an election in the fall — Jane Philpott defends her decision to run as an Independent MP, but admits it won’t be easy. <a href="https://twitter.com/RosieBarton?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RosieBarton</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#cdnpoli</a> <a href="https://t.co/TXCdTPpUnZ">pic.twitter.com/TXCdTPpUnZ</a> —@CBCTheNational

Quote of the moment

"All containers containing garbage cleaned and ready to go. Waiting for a couple of documents and routine permission from China for transshipment to Canada. Departure is May 30. Anybody gets in the way one way or another, I will screw you dry. Don't provoke me."

- Teddy Locsin Jr., the Philippines Foreign Secretary, takes a diplomatic approach to the repatriation of rejected Canadian recyclables .

The Philippines' Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Teodoro 'Teddy' Locsin Jr. (Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images)

What The National is reading

Malaysia sending back unwanted Canadian plastic ( CBC )

) Germany's Angela Merkel sounds alarm over antisemitism ( Guardian )

) North Koreans trapped in a 'cycle of corruption,' says UN report ( BBC )

) Iran sees no prospect of negotiations with U.S.: foreign ministry ( Reuters )

) 39 shot, 7 killed in weekend violence ( Chicago Sun-Times )

) Burnout is a legitimate medical diagnosis, says World Health Organization ( SBS News )

) Revealed: What 'McMafia' wife spent $27 million on at Harrods ( Sky News )

) Man caught smuggling 5,000 "medicinal" leeches into Canada in his suitcase ( CBC )

Today in history

May 28, 1982: Sylvester Stallone explains his art

As Rocky III hits theatres, its star and author reveals how he always envisioned his Italian Stallion pictures as a trilogy, because he wanted to "try and elevate the spirit of man, rather than depress it." Think of how much better off we all are now that there are eight films in the series.

The actor and writer of the blockbuster 1976 movie Rocky describes the endless process of shaping a script. 9:47

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