Rio, August 13, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The proposals contained in the "Letter from Rio," presented on Tuesday (12) at the XIII World Criminology Congress, will be forwarded to the Minister of Justice, Márcio Thomaz Bastos, on August 19. The document was prepared during the fifth forum of secretaries of Justice, Human Rights, and Prison Administration from various Brazilian states. The forum took place in the Rio Center, parallel to the Criminology Congress.

The Letter recognizes the seriousness of the situation affecting penitenciaries throughout the country, the result of neglect in terms of the public policies instituted over the course of many years, and various proposals recommend the adoption of emergency measures to resolve the problem. Among them, the provision of space, in the short-run, for at least one hundred thousand more prisoners, to compensate for the backlog that exists in the country. Greater investment in the prison system is also urged.

The question of investments in the prison system was a topic that received considerable attention at the five forums held in Brasília, Sergipe, São Paulo, and Espírito Santo, as well as the latest one in Rio, and the increase in the number of inmates in Brazil was pointed out as one of the factors that confer an emergency character to the measures proposed, according to the director of the Council of secretaries, Emanuel Cacho.

"Much has been invested in public safety in the states. As a result, the police have greater agility and are making more arrests. Last year, room for 26 thousand new inmates was added to the prison system. In the past seven months alone, the number of prisoners increased by nearly 50 thousand - at the end of last year, the prison population numbered 236 thousand, and today it amounts to 284 thousand. The way things stand, it would be necessary for the number of prisoners to remain unchanged for the next six years to stabilize the situation. What was difficult before has become critical," he emphasized. (DAS)