15 always contradicted by reality: imprisonment is imprisonment, despite any technical distinctions. XVI. The state of prisons 64. Despite the abundant literature regarding official deprivation of liberty, the most disquieting matters that have persisted throughout the history, a long history, of this means of prevention and punishment, are in plain view, with all their obvious problems. That literature encompasses not only the accounts of prisoners and witnesses of captivity, the studies of criminologists and specialists in penitentiary matters, and critical interpretations, but also, most exuberantly, the explicit intentions in government programs and projects, as well as abundant and detailed provisions: from constitutional laws to circular letters, edicts, and regulations that announce one of the most often proclaimed and least fulfilled endeavors: penitentiary reform. A reform that goes beyond public statements and resolutions to enter, as it must and is expected to do, the prison aisles, the corridors, the cells and the dungeons that still, despite everything, are a widespread trait of the geography of prisons. 65. Criminal and penitentiary congresses of the 19th century and the 20th century efforts, including those sponsored by the United Nations, have led to multiplied recommendations, statements, provisions, principles, and programs geared toward improving the preventive or penitentiary internment system, for minors or for adults. The First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders (Geneva, 1955) issued half a century ago a set of rules –which I mentioned above- that have provided very useful guidance. They brought together the two trends that were in vogue: a humanitarian one, derived from classical Law –the territory of reformers-, and the therapeutic or finalist one, originating in the best ideas on social defense, without sliding into the “dangerous dangerousness.” Afterwards, other documents have reaffirmed, in legal texts, the “standards” for management and treatment of inmates: for example, the aforementioned set of principles of the United Nations for the protection of all persons subject to any form of detention or imprisonment, adopted on December 9, 1988, and the United Nations basic principles for the treatment of inmates, adopted on December 14, 1990. If these are the standards, which no one rejects –setting aside, of course, frontal challenges of criminal Law and prison itself-, how has this been reflected in the reality of prisons? 66. Prison is, ultimately –less than capital punishment, but that depends on the circumstances under which each of them operates, specifically, on the dual level of prevention and execution-, an extreme act of force by the State against a citizen, legitimized by certain conditions that make it inevitable –rather than desirable or commendable- and that, at the same time, strictly define its borders. Therefore, precautionary or penal measures that entail deprivation of liberty must be rigorously based on the requirements of lawfulness, necessity, and proportionality. This must apply throughout the prosecutional function of the State: from criminal commination (substantive Law, preventive establishment of punishability) and concrete procedural matters (procedural law, ordering of precautionary measures) to execution of punishment (executory law, final judicial adjustment of the legal consequences ordered in the judgment of conviction or in the condemnatory section of a judgment that encompasses the declaratory ruling and conviction). 67. A deprivation of liberty is unacceptable if it is not set forth specifically in the law – understood as the Court has in Advisory Opinion OC-6/86, of May 9, 1986, regarding the term ‘laws’ in Article 30 of the American Convention on Human Rights-, if it is not truly