Unacceptable posture
São Paulo, the state with the country’s largest prison population, withholds data for national surveyC
The state of São Paulo, which has the largest prison population in Brazil (nearly 220,000 people), was the only state not to provide data on its prisons for the latest survey by Infopen (Integrated Prison Information System), released in June this year by the Ministry of Justice. The survey is available here.
Conducted to address the serious shortage of information on the Brazilian prison system and to influence the debate on the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility in the Legislative, the National Prison Information Survey compiled information from all Brazil’s prison facilities until June 2014.
The collection of data for the survey, however, required the prison departments of each state to fill out a form and send it to Depen (National Prison Department of the Ministry of Justice). According to Depen, despite a number of deadline extensions and repeated requests, the SAP (São Paulo Prison Administration Department) did not submit the form or give any explanation why.
“Since this state is responsible for the custody of more than a third of the Brazilian prison population, we raised information on the type of facility, the number of places and the prison population from the website of the São Paulo State Prison Administration Department in April 2015,” said Depen in a statement on the methodology used for the survey. “Other information on the state of São Paulo could not be obtained and, despite its importance for the national prison assessment, was excluded from this report,” it said.
In an official petition sent on July 15 to the SAP secretary, Lourival Gomes, the Criminal Justice Network, of which Conectas is part, requested the immediate dispatch of the state’s prison data to Depen. Repeating the same critical tone of this document, the network of organizations also published an open letter emphasizing the seriousness of SAP’s posture.
“The tacit and unacceptable refusal by São Paulo to fill out the data collection form – which means the omission of data on approximately 220,000 people – obscures the overall assessment of the country, distorts the results of the survey, obstructs the access to information, hinders the public debate and prevents the improvement of prison policy in São Paulo – and Brazil,” reads the letter.
Click here to read the official petition sent to the SAP.
Click here to read the open letter.
