Argentina’s CSJN orders the Provincial Supreme Court to take substantive measures against prison crowding in Buenos Aires Province
The ruling recognizes the gravity of jail and prison overcrowding in the province. Since 2012, the number of persons permanently jailed in police stations has risen 426%.
“Argentina is responsible for widespread and persistent violations of the Convention against torture”
The UN Special Rapporteur on torture, upon concluding his visit to the country, said that detention conditions in provincial police stations and prisons “severely contravene international standards and are incompatible with human dignity.” He also denounced the “degrading” conditions in the Melchor Romero psychiatric hospital and police violence in low-income neighborhoods. At the same time, he urged the Argentine state to allocate “sufficient resources to ensure the timely processing and adjudication of the remaining cases and trials for crimes against humanity.”
Prisons: Historic sentencing for penitentiary officials in the deaths of 33 inmates
Twelve years after the fact, the justice system convicted three officials from the Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service for the 33 deaths that occurred in a fire at the Magdalena prison. For the first time, high-ranking officials from the provincial penitentiary service received long sentences for a prison blaze and its consequences.
Places of confinement: the provincial state must adopt urgent measures
In the 163rd period of IACHR hearings, the Comisión Provincial por la Memoria (CPM), Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) and the Public Appeals Defender exposed the crisis in the system of confinement in the province of Buenos Aires and called on the provincial and national states to take measures to reduce overcrowding, overpopulation, inhuman conditions, lack of access to health, and torture in prisons.
