Human rights organizations demand that some prisoners, the prisoners in the third degree, the ones dependent on article 100.2 of the Penitenciary Regulations and the prisoners who are enjoying permits, be sent home to serve their sentence with telematic control. Human rights organizations demand that some prisoners, the prisoners in the third degree, the ones dependent on article 100.2 of the Penitenciary Regulations and the prisoners who are enjoying permits, be sent home to serve their sentence with telematic control.

Irídia

31.03.2020

Human rights organizations demand that some prisoners, the prisoners in the third degree, the ones dependent on article 100.2 of the Penitenciary Regulations and the prisoners who are enjoying permits, be sent home to serve their sentence with telematic control.

Statement sent to the Department of Justice of the Generalitat de Catalunya: Alternative measures of deprivation of liberty in the context of covid 19 surge in the prison system

What is detected in prisons?

As the WHO and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (Michelle Bachelet) have just pointed out, the diagnosis determines the existence of:

  • An extremely vulnerable population consisting of prisoner.
  • A lack of physical space to enforce the mandatory confinement.
  • A forced coexistencegoing against the decreed state of emergency.
  • A difficulty to access public health in the same conditions as citizens.
  • A consequent increase in the risk of contagion from Covid-19.
  • A suspension of communicationsbetween prisoners and their families.
  • An obvious fragility of people deprived of liberty in the face of the health emergency.
  • This constitutes a treatment both inhuman and degrading in current circumstances already producing infections, deterioration of health, isolation and deaths.

What is there to do?

  • It is urgent to proceed to a drastic reduction of the incarcerated population, in times of extreme emergency and before it is too late and the situation produces (even more) dire negative results.

How to reduce the incarcerated population?

  • The reduction could have a positive result in an improved access to health care in at least 4 cases:
    • Inmates classified in the second degree who have enjoyed temporary releases (credited good behavior)
    • Prisoners depending on the article 100.2 of the Penitentiary Regulations
    • Prisoners aged 70 and over
    • Prisoners with severe pathologies
  • These 4 assumptions are susceptible to move to Grade 3 of the living situation provided for in article 86.4 of the Penitentiary Regulations and stay at home with electronic monitoring.

 

The organizations presenting this communiqué are: Observatory of the Penal System and Human Rights of the UB, SIRECOVI, Irídia, Institute of Human Rights of Catalonia, Defense Commission of the ICAB, Justice and Peace, Relatives of Prisoners of Catalonia, and the Catalan Association for the Defense of Human Rights.

Galeria de noticies