10
d)
the Commission believes that certain measures need to be taken by
the State, the following among them:
make a proper selection and
immediately hire guard personnel who are duly trained and in sufficient
numbers to guarantee the inmates’ lives and personal safety; provide training
to the prison personnel and officials of Rondônia state; immediately segregate
the “safe” prisoners from the prison’s general population and place them in
cells sufficiently removed from the general prison population and with the
space and sanitation facilities required under the applicable international
standards; refrain from admitting new inmates into Urso Branco Prison until
the overpopulation and overcrowding are resolved; install an early warning
system to prevent and avoid new prison crises that have irreversible and
irreparable effects; allow the petitioners full access to the prison, both to its
physical facilities and to the inmates and prison officials; and establish a
suitable mechanism for filing direct, individual complaints;
e)
the State must conduct serious, impartial, thorough and prompt
investigations, both criminal and administrative, into the acts of violence that
have occurred at Urso Branco Prison since January 1, 2002, and must
determine who the responsible parties are, whether they be private citizens,
civil servants or public officials, and give them the punishment that the law
prescribes; and
f)
on the morning of June 28, 2004, the Inter-American Commission, the
petitioners and the State met and arrived at a number of preliminary
agreements, not yet formalized,” mainly regarding the mechanism for
coordinating and overseeing compliance with the measures, specifically the
composition, competence and authority of the Commission to coordinate and
oversee compliance with the provisional measures. At this meeting the State
showed a number of documents “illustrating the progress” made in the area
of investigation and punishment. On July 14, 2004, a second meeting will be
held in Brasilia, and then another in the state of Rondônia on the subject of
the measures’ implementation.
24.
The allegations that the petitioners made at the public hearing in question,
which are summarized below:
a)
the State has not taken the measures needed to protect the lives and
personal safety of the inmates, which has caused the deaths of more than 20
inmates. Too few prison guards and police were guarding the inmates at the
time of the April 2004 riot; the number is still too low. After 6:00 p.m. no
guards or police enter the cellblocks where the inmates are held. Highly
dangerous inmates are still being incarcerated in the same sector as those
who pose little danger. At the present time, 240 inmates are inside the
“church,” although security there is not what it should be and the guards have
difficulty getting in. The “safe” inmates, who number around 180, are housed
in 4 cells, each of which is met to accommodate 10 inmates. In order to
ensure the safety and lives of the inmates, the weapons they carry must be
confiscated, a difficult task given the overpopulation in the prison and the
insufficient number of guards and police. Inside the prison, there are conflicts
among various groups of inmates, prison guards and police. While on a
number of occasions agreements have been signed spelling out the inmates’
grievances, those agreements have not been honored, to the point that the
petitioners themselves have lost face with the inmates. The situation inside