The situation of prisons in Portugal
The new Director-General of Reinsertion and Prison Services, Rui Abrunhosa Gonçalves, has recently taken over, replacing the former Director-General, Rómulo Mateus, who has met since February 2019. Dr. Rómulo Mateus from his mandate, under difficult conditions throughout the pandemic, appointed due to the pandemic.
Despite the selection of some outbreaks of Covid-19 in our prisons, in Portugal the pandemic in our prison population was always under control, not having been verified as tragic situations that were present in countries. In fact, knowing that the arrest of a person is a rate of a virus that controls an environment that controls an environment and can lead to various circumstances of how the population contaminate various have themselves of remarkable work. the pandemic in prisons. Countries, did not suffer a single disease in our truths due to Covid1, when other victims in prison made countless victims in prison. When we remember the number of people we serve, we have an adequate response to our elderly, who recognize that the system adequate to the pandemic situation must have an effective management by which Dr. team.
Such that several establishments are not, however, having other problems in our attributions, through their Commission on Human Rights, country of their Commission on Existing Rights, country of their Commission on Existing Rights. In this context, we must highlight the serious problem of overcrowding in our prisons, which means that, for example, the Funchal Prison has 297 people in a prison designed for 250. Having an occupation that is 25% higher than the capacity of the prison establishment jeopardized for the execution of the sentence, increasing the hardship for the inmates. It is therefore essential to quickly reduce the overcrowding of our prisons, which constitutes a serious human rights problem.
Another very serious problem facing the prison system, and which is a sad reflection of real society, is the higher percentage of inmates dependent on toxicity. Although this is a situation that is not directly related to the prison, since drug addiction is previously contracted, the truth is that it forces a large part of the work in our prisons to be directed to therapies for the treatment of inmates. drug addicts. This leads us to consider that our country is not effectively combating drugs, especially considering what cannot be considered as new drugs, which potentiate like the same ones. The situation is a serious health problem, which is why public drug trafficking is being adequately fought, noting that a large part of the prison population is detained for this crime.
Another crime that represents a high number of detainees is domestic violence. The fact that there are so many for this crime leads us to consider that it is not adopted as protected policies for this scourge in Portugal. In fact, follow-up structures were created that allowed an adequate prevention of this phenomenon, instead of the fight against domestic violence being based only on many children.
There is therefore much to do to improve the situation in our prisons. We are therefore very happy with the new Directorate of Reinsertion and effective services for the luck of this objective.
Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon
Writes on Tuesdays, without adopting the rules of the 1990 spelling agreement