2 as grounds for the hearing held at the XXVII Extraordinary Session of the InterAmerican Court in Brasilia, that runs along the lines of the memorable hearing on the same subject held as part of the Extraordinary Sessions of Asunción, Paraguay, approximately a year ago. 5. On this point, I think it convenient to identify the categories of persons held in custody and the problems affecting them. Firstly, regard must be had to detainees, who are subject to investigation of actual or alleged crimes; secondly, untried prisoners, subject to pretrial detention —known as “prisoners awaiting sentencing”, with numbers far exceeding in proportion other categories of persons held in custody—; and finally, prisoners that have been convicted by judicial authorities and are therefore subject to “punitive imprisonment,” not as a merely precautionary or preventive measure. I set aside other categories of persons subject to confinement for other reasons, such as the mentally ill, and minors who are —whether rationally or not — subjected to institutional confinement. 6. This large set of persons is on the verge of danger, in a twilight zone where the human being and the State meet —and crash against each other, more often than not. These two contenders have too different strengths and titles, which immediately seem to disqualify one and support the other, in many an aspect. The former is seen as the “social enemy”, a “dangerous subject”, a “punished” or “segregated” individual, whose rights and powers have been restricted, subject to control and suspicion; the latter is seen as the defender of institutions and administrator of the law and punishment, who works in the name of society and warrants the use of force. Then, we are in the presence of what I have come to call the “critical zone” of human rights, where they run great risk, and where —in the end— the human being may be doomed. 7. In this present case, I do not address the issues of investigation that violates people’s rights, to which the Court has made reference in a number of decisions; instead, I address “life in prison”: the events during captivity at the time of proceedings or execution of sentence. This is in a way a massive and chronic affection of rights, as opposed to most of the infringements that take place elsewhere, which affect only one or a few individuals and which are committed and perfected over a short period of time. Those taking place within confinement centers are of a collective and never-ending nature. Obviously, life in prison is not exempt of the operation of law —as if it were no-one’s land; a space for the exclusion of rights and corresponding duties. Once again, I must quote Carnelutti’s admirable work Las miserias del proceso penal [The Miseries of Criminal Procedure], “the penitentiary — together with the court— is comprised within the palace of justice.” However, is it true, beyond the spirited declaration of the eminent jurist? 8. At the public hearing on the Mendoza prisons —in which no statement in support of their conditions was made, and news, comments, criticism and proposal were discussed— both the parties and the Court —including myself, at my own initiative and at the request of one of parties— made certain contributions to nurture our reflections, but above all, to impel the execution of urgent measures on the part of relevant authorities. 9. In this as in similar cases, I drew my attention to some data in the ‘natural’ history, as it were, of a State’s concern for prisons. In the end, prisons have emerged from the darkness where they had been deliberately placed, and are now exposed for everyone to see —to a lesser or greater extent— their horrors,