17 European Court, for example, in the Kudla v. Poland case, quoted in the judgment to which I attach this Opinion: “the State must ensure that a person is detained in conditions which are compatible in regards for his human dignity, that the manner and method of the execution of the measure do not subject him to distress or hardship of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention and that, given the practical demands of imprisonment, his health and wellbeing are adequately secured by, among other things, providing him with the requisite medical assistance.” 76. Growing acceptance of preventive detention, on the one hand, and excessive use of punitive incarceration, on the other, have led to overpopulation in the prisons which, in turn, is another source of violations. There, one of the basic, constantly proclaimed rules of prison classification flounders: the separation of indictees – “presumed innocent” and convicts –“found guilty”. This problem is evident in the case we are now discussing, as in some others there continues to be promiscuity between adults and minors, contrary to all recommendations and rules. An expert witness who reported to the Court on this case argued –in a description applicable to many prisons in more than a few countries of our continent- that “protracted criminalization prior to sentencing is currently the most serious problem of the criminal justice system” in the State. 77. There is a great distance between the classical, dark prisons with individual cells and the promiscuous, noisy ones, but they are both devastating for the inmate. He is destroyed both by incarceration in cells, condemned by Silvio Pellico, and by the undesirable promiscuity described by Dostoyevsky. Mateo Alemán, in his “Guzmán de Alfarache”, had already described the noisy, crowded prison in Seville: “ a jumbled republic, a brief hell, a protracted death, a bridge of sighs, a vale of tears, a madhouse where each one screams out and treats madness as his own.” At the Penitenciaría del Litoral -which is not an unheard of abyss in the landscape of prisons- there was an area, one hundred and twenty square meters, called the “quarantine,” where there were “three hundred inmates sleeping on the ground,” according to the statement of an expert witness. In the case we are discussing here, this promiscuous prison, without the slightest classification –disregarding constitutional provisions and international standards-, exercised its demolishing power. 78. The statement of the victim is an eloquent one and it is not contradicted by other information in the proceeding before the Inter-American Court. The respondent’s plea addressed various aspects of the case, but not the prison conditions at the so-called Penitenciaría del Litoral. “One night (there) –stated the detainee- is like hell. A normal human being cannot bear it. Those who had no cells spent the time in the aisles, climbing the walls, moving from one cell-block to another and trying to steal through the cell bars. They also went into the cell-blocks to smoke crack. One could buy anything in this prison, there were drug deals, cocaine, alcohol and weapons. People went around armed.” One is surprised and filled with admiration that the spouse of the accused, together with their young daughter, could bear to remain with him over the weekends at the Penitenciaría del Litoral. She visited him seventy-four times, and these must have been an equal number of anguishing episodes. 79. This case and many others have been documented, throughout the contemporary world, by literature and films that reflect the worst aspects of this “black genre.” A chronicle with the suggestive title Midnight Express en Equateur was mentioned in the trial that led to the September 7, 2004 judgment. Part of what happened there has to do with principle 1 –a very well numbered principle that governs the rest- of the body of principles that I mentioned above, and which reads: