The number of complaints of violation of rights, such as torture, punishment, mistreatment and threats, suffered by incarcerated people tripled in 2023 in the state of São Paulo. The reports made to the State Public Defender’s Office this year (211 cases) are 3.45 times greater than the complaints received in the whole of last year (61). The coordinator of the Specialized Nucleus of Prison Situation of the São Paulo Public Defender’s Office, Diego Polachini, assesses that “the system as a whole is torture”. According to him, the violation of rights within prison is not restricted to specific cases, it is systematic, and the only solution is to extricate as many people as possible. “Living in jail is already torturous. The idea of imprisoning a person in a cage would obviously constitute torture in any respect, but as it is a person who is serving a sentence, this is not considered”, said the defender in an interview with Agência Brasil. At the moment, there are only hypotheses for the increase in denunciations, as Polachini pointed out: an increase in the intensity of torture and greater access by families to the means of denunciations. In March of this year, the São Paulo Public Defender’s Office sent an analysis of Brazil’s compliance with the rules contained in the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to the United Nations (UN) Committee against Torture, denouncing violent practices and state inertia in the face of cases. In the document, the body points out the prejudice of the veto by the state government, in 2019, to the bill that established a Mechanism and a Committee to Prevent and Combat Torture in the state; the need for prompt and impartial investigation in cases of institutional violence; and also denounces serious episodes of torture practiced by prison tactical groups. Polachini highlights cases that occurred during the invasion by the Rapid Intervention Group (GIR), which are in the document. The prison tactical group, subordinated to the Secretariat of Penitentiary Administration (SAP), should be a punctual intervention to repress disorders in the units. However, the defender considers that the group has become a regular and ostensible presence in prisons, being the protagonist of common episodes of violence and torture against prisoners. “In regular actions, they usually invade a jail, when there is some allegation of disturbance or a prisoner who does not want to go back to his cell, with a rubber bomb, dogs, the prisoners are forced to be naked, often being threatened by dogs very close . So it is a very severe psychological torture that they do”, said the defender. Illicit objects in cells One of the episodes reported to the United Nations (UN) was an operation carried out in 2015, at the Presidente Prudente Penitentiary, to seize possible illicit objects in cells. At the time, around 240 detainees suffered physical and psychological violence for two and a half hours. According to the document, even without encountering resistance, the GIR agents cursed and physically attacked the prisoners with punches, kicks and batons, in addition to shooting rubber bullets in a closed environment. “Several prisoners suffered bodily injuries, mainly on their backs and buttocks, demonstrating that they were in a defenseless position. As if that were not enough, among the injured were an elderly person and a wheelchair user, which demonstrates the level of brutality of the attacks”, reported the Ombudsman’s Office in the analysis. The document points out that, in addition to institutional violence, other systematic violations that constitute acts of torture in the São Paulo prison system are “prison overcrowding, lack of adequate ventilation and lighting, insufficient minimum health teams, lack of medication, poor quality of the physical structure of buildings, water rationing, lack of potable water, lack of hot showers, limitation and absence of sunbathing, lack of personal hygiene items and clothing and lack of adequate food and in sufficient quantity”. Inmates inside one of the cells in the disciplinary sector of the Mirandópolis II Penitentiary complained about the lack of hygiene in the place, during an inspection carried out in May 2022 penitentiary system in São Paulo. “The fear of hunger is constant in the prison system, prisoners live under this threat and are constantly hungry here in the state of São Paulo. They need to supplement their diet through family support. If the family does not send food, they complain that they are very hungry, that the food is not enough”, revealed Polachini to Agência Brasil. The defender also cited situations known as “hunger punishment”, in which irregularities committed by incarcerated people are punished with food rationing. “They go without food for a period or the food for them is diminished. This strikes me as blatant torture,” he commented. In addition, according to him, on a daily basis most units ration water, prisoners are often deprived of showering and are constantly thirsty. Regarding psychological violence, there are reports of threats by employees of prison units. “When you get close to his exit [para o semi aberto]the officials begin to threaten with [aplicação de] serious faults, so he lives a constant psychological torture afraid to say anything, do anything, and have his right to regime progression prevented.” According to him, there is also torture that is done during searches. “There are specific penitentiaries where prisoners, in order to go out to work, for example, even though they are in the semi-open regime, they have to take off their clothes every day”. The defender added that, in one of the complaints received by the Defender’s Office, a person with a disability was forced to take off his clothes and sit on the floor whenever he left the cell, which was defined as “torturous” by the complainant. Ideal conditions The public defender Polachini points out that the only limitation imposed by Justice on incarcerated people is deprivation of liberty. In view of this, the other rights, guaranteed to any citizen, should also be guaranteed within prison. According to him, this is the understanding of the superior courts and international courts. Among the measures considered basic, are the removal of guards and penitentiary agents involved in cases of torture, access to a doctor, improvement in the supply of food, both in quantity and quality, prohibition of water rationing. “All the rights that people have on the street, prisoners should have, then, the right to work, to study, to dignity – which encompasses a greater number of rights. Prisoners have exactly all the rights of a citizen [em liberdade]: he cannot be tortured, he cannot be attacked, he cannot be cursed, he cannot have rationing of essential products, such as water and electricity”, he said. For him, the improvement of the structural conditions of the penitentiary system involves extrication measures. “The only solution that I see as an improvement on this is extrication. The prison system itself is meant to be a form of torture, so to reduce torture just by getting people out. So the release of as many people as possible to prevent more people from suffering from this.” There are currently instruments aimed at reducing the prison population, but they are not put into practice by the judiciary. “Our Constitution treats prison as an exception. 40% of prisoners are preventive prisoners, prisoners who have not yet been sentenced. The constitution and Code of Criminal Procedure, and even the recommendations of the CNJ and the STF, say that imprisonment before sentencing is an exception, ”he said. “Many times this is unfortunately not applied, mainly here in the state of São Paulo, which has a high rate of conversion of arrests in flagrante delicto into pre-trial detention. Alternative measures to pre-trial detention could be more applied, they are already completely foreseen, ”he added. He cited the collective habeas corpus, granted by the STF in 2018, which determined the replacement of preventive arrest by house arrest for pregnant women, nursing mothers and mothers of children up to 12 years old or people with disabilities, throughout the national territory. However, the measure is still difficult to apply. “The judges here in São Paulo end up being very reticent in applying this, often saying that they only have two options: the mother committed the crime with the child or without the child. If she commits the crime with the child, [consideram que] she is being a mother who left the child at risk. If she commits a crime without the child, [consideram que] she had already abandoned her son, so there would be no reason for her to have the right to house arrest”, lamented the defender. Among the recommendations of the document sent to the UN, the Ombudsman asks that the country adopt measures that guarantee the precautionary removal of public servants suspected of involvement in crimes of torture and ill-treatment and that there be a swift, impartial, effective investigation and within a reasonable period of time of the cases. The auxiliary coordinator of the Center for Citizenship and Human Rights of the São Paulo Public Defender’s Office, Surraily Youssef, assesses that the greatest investigation that is carried out in cases of violence committed by state agents is not the conduct of the police, for example, but the conduct of the person who was arrested. “What we see is that there is still a devaluation of the narrative about violence of people who have at some point had some contact with the Criminal Justice and it is this culture that we need to reverse and fight so that that narrative is central to starting the verification mechanisms”, he said. She adds that the institutional frameworks, both national and international, indicate that torture is a practice that must always be prohibited and all bodies that have contact with torture allegations, mainly the judiciary and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, must forward a prompt investigation. Youssef considers that it is necessary to think about inspection mechanisms for deprivation of liberty environments, in order to expand the possibilities of access to prison for this inspection, such as the Mechanism and the Committee to Combat Torture at the state level, which are foreseen in the additional protocol to the UN Convention against Torture. The instruments were foreseen in a bill, approved by the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo, but it was vetoed by the government. “O [João] In 2019, Doria vetoed the project, which established the Mechanism and the State Committee, which could access spaces of deprivation of liberty. And not only prison, there are reports of violence in therapeutic communities, in psychiatric hospitals, in nursing homes, so it is important for us to expand, and the existence of the mechanism and the committee would allow inspections to be carried out in this prison space”, he said. She adds that, when there is an opening for inspection of these areas of deprivation of liberty, it is possible not only to record torture practices, but to think of recommendations for their overcoming. On the other hand The Secretariat for Penitentiary Administration reported that it does not tolerate any misconduct by public servants and that, for any allegation of torture or related acts, the employee is investigated and, if the allegation is proven, he is removed and punished in accordance with the law. According to the folder, there are channels for receiving complaints, such as the Ombudsman and the Administrative Internal Affairs of the Penitentiary System and the confidentiality of the whistleblower is preserved. “About food, SAP informs that at least three meals are served daily (breakfast, lunch and dinner). The food is balanced and follows a previously established menu prepared by nutritionists. There is no water rationing in the SAP units. All prisons follow what the World Health Organization determines, which stipulates a minimum per capita consumption of 100 liters of water per day,” says the note. To combat prison overcrowding, the ministry informed that, this year, three new units are expected to be delivered in the municipalities of Aguaí, Riversul and Santa Cruz da Conceição, which will have a total of 2,469 vacancies. “The government of São Paulo also encourages the adoption of alternative penalties by the Judiciary, in addition to carrying out joint efforts aimed at speeding up the processes. In the last ten years, the number of vacancies has increased by 40.12% throughout the state”, he concluded.
Agência Brasil
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