Shocking pics reveal inside overcrowded Brazil jails where inmates sleep on concrete slabs and endure poisonous centipede infestations

THESE harrowing photographs reveal the squalid conditions inside Brazil's jails - and offer a timely reminder why you should avoid getting banged up in the South American country.

In these overcrowded and underfunded hell-holes, survival often depends on protection from drug gangs while violence among inmates is rife.

The photographs show dozens of prisoners lying head-to-toe across cell floors, while others clamour for a seat on ripped and filthy mattresses.

What little clothes the inmates own are dried on makeshift wash lines erected between bunk beds and the cells' rafters.

And other rooms have plastic sheets tied to the ceilings to stop prisoners from getting soaked when it rains and water leaks through holes in the roof.

Incredibly, many prisons are also subjected to infestations of poisonous centipedes and scorpions, while huge rat populations are left to harass inmates.

The pictures emerge as the death toll from a prison gang war in the country's south east hits 99 - many of whom were beheaded and had their intestines ripped out.

Brazil's most powerful criminal gang, First Command, is exploiting conditions to expand its reach across the national prison system.

Legal and security experts say the government's failure to improve conditions that make Brazil's prisons seem more like dungeons has only strengthened the First Command, based in the southern city of Sao Paulo and known by the Portuguese acronym PCC.

"The state has lost control over prisons," said Claudio Lamachia, who has visited many penitentiaries as chairman of Brazil's bar association. "Death is often the only alternative for an inmate who doesn't want to cooperate with gangs like PCC."

First Command recruits new members, orders hits on rivals and runs drug-trafficking operations both inside and outside prisons even though many of its leaders are in maximum security penitentiaries in Sao Paulo state.

The recent string of violence began on January 1, when 56 inmates were killed in the northern state of Amazonas.

Authorities said that the Family of the North gang targeted PCC members in a clash over control of drug-trafficking routes in northern states. It's not yet known how many died from each gang, but many of those killed were beheaded and dismembered.

Then on January 6, in the neighboring state of Roraima, 33 prisoners were killed, many with their hearts and intestines ripped out. Uziel Castro, Roraima state's security secretary, said First Command members instigated the bloodshed against other prisoners for motives not entirely clear.

Between January 2 - 9, another 10 inmates were killed in smaller prison clashes in Amazonas and the northeastern state of Paraiba.

On Monday, the federal government sent 200 soldiers to prisons in Amazonas and Roraima states. Several other states have requested similar help.

"The penitentiary system has been in crisis a long time and gotten worse in the last 10 years," Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said recently, noting there has been a lack of investment amid a ballooning prisoner population.

Brazil had 233,000 prisoners in 2000, compared to 622,000 in 2014, according to Ministry of Justice data. The prisons combined were built to house roughly half that current number.

First Command was founded after a 1992 riot-turned-massacre when heavily military police stormed a prison, killing at least 111. Since then, the gang's rise has paralleled a deteriorating prison system.

Police investigators say the gang controls Rio de Janeiro's largest slum even though the city is home to the rival gang Red Command. Called "the party" by its members, First Command also has operations in Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru, according to Brazilian federal authorities.

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