identity and then detaining them for lengthy periods of time… The State party should take all necessary steps, including the adoption of legislative measures, to put an end to the practice of detaining persons when such detention is not related to the commission of an offence….9 21. The Commission also takes note that in the inter-American system, the Inter-American Court indicated in the Case of Bulacio v. Argentina: … at the time of the facts [1991], there were indiscriminate police detention practices, including the so-called razzias, detentions to establish identity and detentions in accordance with police edicts on misdemeanors.10 22. The IACHR takes note that several civil society organizations, both Argentine and international, have also expressed their concern over the practices described above. In this respect, the Centro de Estudios Legales (CELS) and Human Rights Watch indicated the following in their 1998 joint report on police insecurity: The police have … powers that give them discretion to detain persons, by judging misdemeanors and the power to detain to conduct an identity or background check. These powers are based on the presumption of a pre-criminal state in broad sectors of society and on the assumption that the police have the capacity to assess and intervene in the situation. As a result, this police function of security ends up “contaminating” the judicial investigation tasks, applying the arbitrariness of the criteria used to stop and hold persons stereotyped as “suspicious.”11 … The detentions by personnel at police stations are in the vast majority of cases are explained by adducing that the person “does not justify his or her being in the place” or that he or she is “prowling about with a suspicious attitude” or that “cannot show his identity,” or else that “displays attitudes of nervousness/unease, attempting to go unnoticed in the presence of the police,” as appears in the courts’ books. These are all cases of young men who gather at corners with their friends…, in pairs in plazas, poor persons waiting for busses, etc., that is, situations that in the police vocabulary generally can be classified as “pre-criminal state” or “suspicious state.”12 23. The IACHR also notes that Argentine institutions have issued pronouncements regarding this situation. For example, the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsperson (Defensoría del Pueblo) of the city of Buenos Aires issued a resolution in 2012 in which it indicated as follows: … in most of the cases analyzed the use of this power (conferred by federal law 23,950, called “arrest to check identity”) is automatic. The persons identified were not committing, nor it is understood that they could commit, a crime or misdemeanor, thus there was no reason to require identification, they were just poor persons living on the street and it would appear that said status, in the facts, authorized the police officers to act.13 C. Carlos Alberto Fernández Prieto 1. 9 The events of May 26, 1992 United Nations, Human Rights Committee, Concluding Observations on Argentina, August 10, 2016, paras. 17-18. I/A Court HR. Case of Bulacio v. Argentina. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of September 18, 2003. Series C No. 100, 10 para. 69. CELS and Human Rights Watch, La inseguridad policial: Violencia de las fuerzas de seguridad en la Argentina, 1998, p. 45. CELS and Human Rights Watch, La inseguridad policial: Violencia de las fuerzas de seguridad en la Argentina, 1998, p. 49. 13 Office of the Human Rights Ombudsperson for the City of Buenos Aires, Resolution 1135/2012. 11 12 5