RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's Justice Minister Tarso Genro Thursday presented a project of special penitentiaries to hold young adults aged 18 to 24, in order to tackle the overcrowding in the regular prisons and to avoid an escalation in the criminal career of youngsters.

    The project is part of the ministry's National Program of Public Safety and Citizenship. The first special prisons will be built in seven states including Bahia and Alagoas, and are expected to be completed by the end of 2009.

    According to Genro, the special prisons will have classrooms that can be used for academic and vocational courses, as well as a health care center with doctors, psychologists and social workers. Each cell will hold six inmates.

    There are 443,000 people serving jail time in Brazil, about a quarter of whom are males aged 18 to 24.

    The prison system today is "a factory of criminals", and the relapse rate among young adults reaches about 70 percent, Genro said.

    The new prisons are aimed to "humanize the prison system and preserve the young inmates," he said.

    Besides building new prisons, Genro added there would also be are form in the existing ones, which would help reduce Brazil's crime rates in medium and long terms.

    Official statistics showed in 2006, Brazil's murder rate was of23 for every 100,000 inhabitants, compared with 12 out of every 100,000 in Chile.