3 the particularly egregious nature of the violations given the circumstances under which they occurred, the manner in which they were committed, the characteristics of the victims and other data that might reasonably qualify them as victims. This concept can also be analyzed as a function of the special relationship that exists between the public authority and the individual, as happens in the instant case. Regrettably, the situation I have described here is not found in prisons alone. This is far from being an exceptional case. This state of affairs, found in many different places and in many different countries, has been discussed at length, deplored and censured but never corrected. The norms and rhetoric about prisons routinely clashes with the reality of prisons. There is an enormous job that remains to be done, which is to reclaim human rights in these institutions, virtually everywhere. Such deplorable conditions are not only inimical to fundamental rights, but also throw the criminal justice system as a whole into a crisis, since one of that system’s most dramatic statements -but certainly not the only one- is to deprive someone of his liberty. Deprivation of liberty places the person at the mercy of the circumstances -that in some cases could best be described as chaos- unless the State intervenes to prevent it and to organize prison life. Prison rhetoric and prison laws collide with the brutal facts about many of our prisons. This has to change and the change has to be fast and radical. Since the instant case is only for provisional measures involving a local prison, this Order can go no further. And it is not my place to do so in a Concurring opinion attached to a court order of that nature. I will confine myself here, as I did at the June 28, 2004 hearing, to expressing profound concern over the fate of persons whose lives depend upon the will, the resolve and the effectiveness of the authorities whose responsibility, under the American Convention on Human Rights and, of course, domestic law, is to ensure the protection of the principal rights of the inmates, who cannot do it for themselves. Sergio García-Ramírez Judge Pablo Saavedra-Alessandri Secretary