Lack of prison places no excuse for more restrictive sentences
Supreme Court rules that prisoners who are entitled to sentence progression may not be penalized by overcrowding
The Supreme Court approved on Thursday, June 30, Binding Precedent 57 determining that prisoners who are eligible for progression to a less restrictive form of incarceration, but who are prevented by a lack of prison places, may be allowed to serve their sentences under more beneficial conditions. As far as human rights organizations are concerned, the court was right to recognize that prisoners should not be penalized for the inability of the State to provide prison places in the correct type of facility, but it was wrong to complicate the transfer process.
The initial proposal, made by the Federal Public Defender’s Office with the support of Pastoral Carcerária (the Catholic Church’s prisoner outreach service), guaranteed that in the absence of an available prison place, the inmate would immediately be granted more beneficial conditions.
The new wording, changed by Justice Roberto Barroso, states that “the lack of places in a suitable prison facility does not authorize the maintenance of the prisoner in a more restrictive regime” but it also determines that before any transfer can occur, the provisions of an earlier ruling must be observed, in reference to Special Appeal 641,320.
In this specific case, the Supreme Court determined that three criteria must be taken into account before authorizing the transfer of a prisoner to a less restrictive facility: 1) the possibility of the early release of prisoners from the less restrictive facility whose places could be taken by those eligible for progression; 2) the availability of ankle monitors or placement under house arrest; 3) the application of alternative penalties and/or an obligation to study for prisoners entitled to progress to an open facility.
“The way the ruling was given, it bureaucratizes a debate that has already been settled, even in the Supreme Court itself. Today, prisoners who can appeal their case benefit from this understanding that imprisoned people cannot be held in a more restrictive regime than they are entitled to. But poor prisoners, who do not have a lawyer, do not appeal their case and they spend months or even years in a more restrictive facility than stipulated by the sentence,” explained Marcos Fuchs, associate director of Conectas.
“It is a great injustice and the way things currently stand, prison sentence supervision judges have a good excuse to keep on violating the Constitution. This poses a serious risk to the enforcement of the Supreme Court’s ruling,” he added.
- Click here to read the memorial submitted by Conectas to the Court.
Watch the statement given by Marcos Fuchs during the judgement of Special Appeal 641,320:
