No prison places
Supreme Court to hear appeal against house arrest due to shortages in prison space
The Supreme Court will rule this Wednesday, November 25, on an appeal filed by the Rio Grande do Sul State Public Prosecutor’s Office that contests a ruling by the Rio Grande do Sul State Court to allow a convicted offender to serve his sentence under house arrest due to the lack of places available in semi-open prisons.
According to Special Appeal No. 641,320 filed in 2011, the inability of the State to provide a place in a semi-open prison facility does not authorize the Judiciary to grant the benefit of house arrest outside the situations provided by law.
According to data from the Ministry of Justice from June 2014, there is a shortage of 85,000 places in secure prisons and 22,600 places in semi-open facilities – a shortfall of 34% and 25.2%, respectively. Less than 7.5% of all the cases analyzed by the CNJ (National Justice Council) in the prison task forces it has conducted since 2010 resulted in sentence progression.
In 2011, when the case was first filed, several organizations including Conectas requested in a public statement for the appeal to be rejected, on the grounds that it violates the principle of individualization of sentences and the guarantee that sentences must be served in the appropriate facility.
“As a result of the lack of places in the semi-open system, many inmates are denied the right to sentence progression. On account of its own incompetence, the State violates constitutional rights and further overcrowds the secure prison system,” said Rafael Custódio, coordinator of the Justice program at Conectas. “This appeal proposes that the offender pay the consequences for the inability of the State to observe the law, which is not only inhumane, but also unconstitutional.”
In the statement, the organizations called for the approval of Binding Precedent 57, which was submitted to the Supreme Court in 2010 by the Federal Public Defender’s Office. The document guarantees that prisoners who have earned the right to sentence progression are either transferred to an appropriate facility or serve a more beneficial sentence, such as in an open prison or under house arrest. The Supreme Court judgement of Binding Precedent 57 was halted in March after Justice Luís Roberto Barroso requested an adjournment.
In 2013, Conectas associate director Marcos Fuchs participated in a public hearing organized by the Supreme Court to provide insights for the judgement of Special Appeal No. 641,320. Watch his presentation at the hearing here.
