FEBEM, as it was generally called by the children, or CAP, as the facility was officially known after 1990, was Recife's “temporary” holding tank for juvenile delinquents and lost children for no less than 29 years. The compound was known to nearly all children living in the street. A few even boasted of having been in and out more than 100 times. CAP was divided into three parts, one for girls, one for young boys, and one for more “dangerous” adolescent males. Bars and gates kept the children separate in these three areas at night, though some of the time they could mix during the day. Chronically overcrowded, the facility, intended for no more than about 60 children, typically accommodated over 100. They slept on rectangular strips of foam or simply on the cement floor, ate in a large common mess hall, and spent their days watching television, chasing one another around in the courtyard, performing various chores, or engaging in “pedagogical” activities such as gluing together popsicle sticks.

In July 1995, a group of older boys broke into the Children's and Adolescents' Court next door where, in a storeroom for court evidence, they found a vast collection of guns and drugs. In the rebellion that ensued, boys could be seen through the infrared lenses of the national television network TV-Globo sniffing glue and brandishing a variety of guns. As if imitating the heroes of American Westerns, some sported a pistol at each hip and one in each hand.