Organizations question bill on house arrest for pregnant prisoners

The text includes unconstitutional conditions for women to serve these sentences

Senate Bill 64/2018, currently pending in Congress, aims to regulate the system for pregnant women and mothers with children under 12 to serve prison sentences. Parts of the bill, however, make it difficult for these women to serve their sentences under house arrest. Civil society organizations have submitted a technical report to Senator Simone Tebet, the author of the bill, and offered to work together on a new version of the text.

Senate Bill 64/2018 establishes, for example, that to be entitled to house arrest, women need to prove that they are not involved with organized crime, which according to the organizations is unconstitutional. In the technical report, the NGOs suggest that this and other parts they consider problematic should be removed from the text of the bill.

Rafael Custódio, coordinator of the Institutional Violence program at Conectas, explained that the bill is important because “the precariousness of the prison system causes women to be subjected to violations that are ongoing and worse than the prison sentence they receive.”

The document was signed by Conectas, the Criminal Justice Network and its members, and a number of other organizations.

• Click here to read the report in full