8
execution of activities regarding education, training and employment, indicating that
one of the factors that restricts their participation is "the will of the inmates";
j)
“some cases of […] inmates have been evaluated, in order to have access to
different alternative methods of compliance with sentences”. In addition, on April 21,
2008 the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) admitted the
motion to annul articles 374, 375, 406, 407, 456, 457, 458, 460 and 470 of the
Criminal Code and articles 31 and 32 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic
Substances Act, and decreed the suspension of the effects of the rules that
prohibited the granting of “[p]rocedural [b]enefits and [a]lternative [m]ethods of
[c]ompliance with [s]entences”. Furthermore, by means of Resolution No. 789 of
August 7, 2008, it was ordered the “creation of ten (10) new prosecutor’s offices at
the national level”. Along the same line of reasoning, the State informed that by
means of Decree No. 6.398 of September 9, 2008, it was created the National
Commission on Pardons;
k)
The Superior Prison Council was set up as an institution “in charge of the
design and formulation of structural policies to completely deal with the Prison
System". Finally, the State presented information regarding the implementation of
the program “Community for Human Rights- subprogram of 'Penitentiary
Community’ (Haciendo Comunidad para los Derechos Humanos, subprograma
Comunidad Penitenciaria), the “Penitentiary Humanization Project” (Proyecto de
Humanización Penitenciaria) and the new “Model of Penitentiary Management”
(Modelo de Gestión Penitenciaria) and
l)
It will be possible to schedule the visits of the representatives to the four
penitentiary centers once the computer system for prison management (SIGEP) is
implemented (supra Having seen clause 11.f).
12.
That the representatives indicated, inter alia, the following information regarding the
implementation of the provisional measures:
a)
“the State continuously, systematically and notably infringes on the right to
life and humane treatment of the prison population”. Since the provisional measures
have been adopted in each one of the Venezuelan prisons [referred], prison violence
has led to 502 deaths and 1041 injured people (55 deaths and 84 injured people in
La Pica; 135 deaths and 190 injured people in Yare; 158 deaths and 405 injured
people in Uribana and 154 deaths and 362 injured people in El Rodeo). In addition,
“so far in 2009, 55 people died and 158 were injured in these penitentiary centers".
Hence, “more inmates die in Venezuela than in the rest of the hemisphere, and each
two years and a half, the equivalent to the entire population of a penitentiary center
in the country, dies”;
b)
The main grounds for famine strikes and “self-kidnapping of relatives” are,
inter alia, the requests for dismissal or change of authorities, the lack of respect of
procedural periods of time regarding the inmates who have not been convicted for
any crime and who are under arrest pending trial in prison, the undue delays for the
granting of alternative methods of compliance with sentences for convicted inmates,
the physical ill-treatment on the part of officers of the National Guard, the demand
for “infrastructure conditions according to the prison population[,] and [the lack of]
respect towards their relatives";