102 d) one finds in the State’s conduct a pattern of abuses that involves egregious violations of children’s rights and, by extension, of the State’s duty to take adequate measures to protect them. 198. The representatives argued the following with reference to the violation of Article 8 of the American Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) thereof: a) the State violated Article 8 of the Convention, in combination with Article 19 thereof and the corresponding Articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, by maintaining a juvenile justice system that violated the guarantees of due process of law; b) special measures of protection should have been applied during juvenile court proceedings and the State’s discretionary authority should have been limited; c) the judicial guarantees set forth in Article 8 of the Convention apply not just to cases involving adults, but also to cases involving children and adolescents, and to procedures and proceedings conducted to determine their rights or situations; d) the State kept in place an anachronistic judicial system that did not allow for effective oversight of court rulings or continuous review of the sentences imposed; e) the State had no juvenile courts, no juvenile defenders, and no prosecutors specializing in juvenile justice; f) children came under the jurisdiction of the common criminal-law courts as of the age of 14; g) their legal counsel was ineffective, as visits to the incarcerated did not occur on a regular basis and the defense strategy mounted was weak; h) inmates spent protracted periods of time in preventive custody. While the Minor’s Code stipulated that internment in a special institution was not to exceed two years, in practice children languished in preventive detention for far longer than that, which had the effect of making preventive detention an abusive and arbitrary practice. Before the new Code of Criminal Procedure took effect –which entered into full force as of March 2000- criminal cases generally were delayed for an excessive, unreasonable and unjustifiable period of time. The statistics cited by Paraguay’s own Supreme Court showed that cases instituted under the old code of criminal procedure lasted approximately two years and eight months; i) inmates awaiting or standing trial were not separated from convicted inmates, in violation of the principle of presumption of innocence; j) the new Child and Adolescent Code entered into force in April 2002, so that its effects did not apply to the inmates at the Institute; and