Court orders São Paulo government to create a mechanism against torture
The state will have six months to present a detailed implementation plan for the mechanism that was established in 2018
In April, the Federal Court condemned the São Paulo government for failing to introduce the State Committee and Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture (MEPCT/SP), mandated since 2018, and set a six-month deadline, after the final court decision, to submit a detailed implementation plan.
The ruling by the 8th Federal Civil Court of São Paulo requires that the state report on the planned structure, budget resources involved, and the number of professionals needed to conduct periodic visits to all the confinement facilities, such as prisons, juvenile detention centers, and psychiatric hospitals, at least once a year.
The plan must be submitted to the National System for Prevention and Combat of Torture and civil society organizations for assessment, before it is carried out. The state government will also have ten days, following notification, to submit a timetable with the different stages to comply with the court ruling. The government were also ordered to cooperate with the process by holding monthly meetings and reporting on the progress of the actions.
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The measure comes in the wake of a 2023 report by the National Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture, which documented serious violations in prisons and mental health institutions in the state, including beatings, dark cells, unsanitary conditions, and prolonged confinement. The Ministry of Human Rights reported that between 2023 and 2024, about one third of the prisons that were assessed were in bad or terrible condition and more than 120 thousand complaints of torture and ill-treatment have been registered since 2015.
