4 14. In criminal law, the guarantor of the interest protected by law must answer under the form of nonfeasance -for not impeding injurious results, when the guarantor could and should have done so. The jurisprudence of the Court has included the concept of the guarantor, in terms that are conceptually close to those of the legal systems in this regard: on the one hand, the existence of an obligation that derives from a given source; on the other hand, the presence of a typical injurious result, attributed to the obligor. 15. Of course, the State must provide certain living conditions and conditions for development to all persons under its jurisdiction. To do so –specifically, though not exclusively, regarding security and justice- even constitutes a “raison d’être” of the State, and therefore a reference point to assess the justification and efficiency of public authority. Now, this obligation and the consequent responsibility become extreme and much more intense, and they are even more enforceable, with all that this entails, when those entitled to rights are at the mercy of the State –for example, in a “total institution” where everything is regulated and supervised- and cannot, on their own, exercise their rights and impede the harassment of those who abridge them. 16. In these hypotheticals there is a situation of weakness, helplessness or vulnerability, due to procedures established by the State that place the lot of the citizen in the hands of the agents of public authority. “In the instant case –reads the judgment of the Inter-American Court- it has been proven that during March and April 1996 the (accused) was subjected by the prison guards to sessions of physical violence with the aim of obtaining his self-incrimination.” What protection does the inmate have, in the darkness of the jail, in a small invisible city, against guards who violate their mission? 17. If in the hypothetical of criminal nonfeasance the position of guarantor derives from the law or the contract, in that of detention it derives from a de jure situation and a de facto one, stemming from the former. On one hand, the immense restriction of liberty in procedural detention or in punitive incarceration; on the other hand, the real situation generated by this restriction. Of course, the same applies to various conditions in which the State undertakes the almost total responsibility for the exercise of individual rights and protection of human dignity: that is the case in centers where children, adolescents and youths are committed, in public security institutions that fully control the individual’s activity, in health centers, especially those in charge of caring for the mentally ill, and other similar ones. 18. In my Concurring Opinion in the judgment issued in the Case of Hilaire, Constantine and Benjamin, I referred to the role of the State as guarantor, which in this matter entails: a) omitting all that might inflict on the individual privations beyond those strictly necessary for purposes of the detention or fulfillment of the conviction, on the one hand, and b) to provide everything that is pertinent –in accordance with the applicable law- to ensure the aims of the incarceration: security and social adjustment, regularly, on the other. 19. In brief, it is necessary to continue insisting on the existence of that special position of guarantor and on its consequences for the State and for the individual. This encompasses behavior of the agents of the State –who systematically abridge the rights of the inmates in the course of prison life-., through action or omission, as shown by the Tibi and Panchito López cases, to which we must add another recent, explosive situation in the Urso Branco prison, where violent deaths of inmates have continued, despite the provisional measures ordered by the Inter-American Court. 20. Reiteration of the violations, despite projects and promises, and even despite actions that will yield medium- and long-term results, led me to point out in the