Entities and group Prerogativas demand Lula’s veto on the “saidinhas” PL

The Prerogativas group brought together dozens of legal entities, Human Rights and defenders to pressure President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to veto the “saidinhas” bill, which limits the temporary release of prisoners on commemorative dates. The deadline for sanctioning or vetoing the proposal ends this Thursday (11).

According to the entities, the proposal impedes the process of social reintegration of prisoners, in addition to being an “obstacle to the survival of people in prison”.

In the document, they criticize the prohibition of temporary releases in the semi-open regime, which is permitted by current legislation following some parameters such as “having good prison behavior, having completed the necessary period of sentence and that the release is compatible with its objectives”. According to the approved text, the benefit will be granted to inmates in a semi-open regime only if they are to attend supplementary vocational training, secondary education or higher education.

“Temporary releases undergo rigorous control to analyze their requirements and only affect a small portion of the prison population”, they explain.

The entities also state that “even in the face of intense violations of rights in the prison system, as already highlighted above, more than 95% of people who enjoy the right to temporary release regularly return to the prison unit to continue serving their sentence” . And they reinforce that “non-compliance with the sentence is an exception that affects less than 5% of cases”.

The carrying out of the criminological examination and the expansion of the use of electronic ankle bracelets, foreseen in the proposal, are also criticized by the entities. For them, the measures increase Union and State spending and could have a “huge budgetary impact”.

“Such a measure would cause even more violations of the rights of criminalized people and greatly increase the State’s spending on the acquisition of equipment, which is often inefficient”, they explain.

When demanding a veto on the proposal, the entities also criticized the urgent approval in the Senate, without the project passing through other thematic committees, to deepen the debate on the topic. They ask that the matter be debated with academics, security professionals and civil society.

Voting on the proposal gained momentum after the escape of two inmates from the federal prison in Mossoró (RN). And the urgency surrounding the debate was also pressed by governors and was revived in early January, when Minas Gerais Military Police sergeant Roger Dias da Cunha, aged 29, was shot in the head and killed during a chase in Belo Horizonte. The gunman is an inmate who had not returned to the penitentiary after his temporary release from Natal – he has a long criminal record with 18 stints with the police. The case generated national commotion.