Abstract

GUTIERREZ VANEGAS, Sebastián  and  RIVERA ORTIZ, Oscar Mauricio. Incidence of the Unconstitutional State of Affairs Regarding Prison Overcrowding in Latin America: the Humanitarian Crisis of the 21st Century. Opin. jurid. [online]. 2021, vol.20, n.spe43, pp.71-94.  Epub Nov 11, 2021. ISSN 1692-2530.  https://doi.org/10.22395/ojum.v20n43a2.

Prison overcrowding is a generalized problem in Latin-America. In order to counter its effect, some constitutional courts have embraced the unconstitutional state of affairs doctrine to improve the situation of the massive violation of fundamental rights of the prisoners through public policies. Therefore, this article analyzes the incidence of the declaration of that figure in the Latin-American States based upon quantitative evidence in conformity with the temporary and percentage changes in overcrowding. For that, the study presents a series of statistics of the installed capacity and imprisoned population indexes in the States that embraced the figure in contrast with those who did not. Likewise, taking into account the current crises generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, its effects are studied alongside overcrowding. The results obtained are exposed through tables and graphics that allow a detailed analysis of the need of the declaration of this figure as a mean for the demonstration of violations to the human rights of the imprisoned population beyond the poor acting of the State institutions, thus becoming a call to international order for those countries that have embraced the figure.

Keywords : Unconstitutional state of affairs; public policy; prison; overcrowding; COVID-19; massive violations; structural failures.

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