Institute for Defense of the Right to Defense – IDDD (São Paulo)

Contribute to the fight against the abusive pre-trial detention of pregnant women and mothers, and strengthen, and expand custody hearings, all over the country.

Holding meetings with the Department of Penitentiary Administration and with the board of the prison units that have been selected by the project and with the São Paulo Public Defender’s Office to organize and define project details.

Selection of cases to compose the testimonies to be printed on postcards; producing and mailing these postcards; broad dissemination of the campaign.

Renewing partnerships with organizations that participated in the first phase of monitoring; reviewing and adjusting research instruments; holding virtual preparing meetings with all research teams; monitoring of custody hearings by local research teams including the one month trials; systematizing the information collected by local teams and preparing layout; launching and broad dissemination of the report; influencing the states participating in the research.

Sending official letters to the state courts requesting information regarding the  expansion of the implementation of custody hearings in the states, finding out the number of counties included in the project, inquiring about their expansion plans; collecting the information requested; contacting CNJ to gain access to SISTAC – Information System on Custody Hearings; collecting and organizing the information received; preparing the material to be sent to specialists, layout and printing; sending the material.

Approaching judges, prosecutors, public defenders and local BAR representatives (in the selected states); holding facilitated debates with the different authorities of the justice system in the selected states; elaborating a common agenda for the expansion and consolidation of custody hearings.

The scenario of female incarceration in Brazil presented a 35% growth rate between 2010 and 2014, increasing from 28,188 to about 38,000 imprisoned women. It is also in the state of São Paulo that the largest population of female detainees is concentrated, accounting for 39% of the Brazilian contingent in 2014. It is important to note that the number of imprisoned women in Brazil increased 570% in the last 15 years (from 2000 to 2014) and that 68% of incarcerated women are Black. Despite this unfortunate scenario, the year 2016 was marked by important legislative achievements involving the right of women prisoners, whose implementation must now be guaranteed. On March 8, Law 13,257/2016, known as the Legal Framework for Early Childhood Care, was passed, which sets forth principles and guidelines for the formulation and implementation of public policies aimed at this audience. The text also brings important measures to be taken by the criminal justice system, with the amendment of articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Among them, three new hypotheses for the sentencing of house arrest: pregnancy, women with children up to 12 years of age and men who are the sole responsible for the care of children up to 12 years of age. On March 8, the CNJ published the Portuguese version of the UN Rules for the Treatment of Female Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders – Bangkok Rules. It is in this context that the IDDD fights incarceration, a topic with greater empathy potential and, therefore, strategic to confront the entire prison culture in the country.

The IDDD is an organization founded in July 2000, working to strengthen the right to defense. Its mission is to promote in society and in state institutions the idea that everyone has the right to a high quality defense, to the presumption of innocence, to full access to justice, to a fair trial and to a decent enforcement of the sentence imposed to them. All this, regardless of social class, whether guilty or innocent, despite the crime accusation.

– Ideas (BA).
– GAJOP – Legal Assistance Office for Grassroots Organizations (PE)
– Criminology of confrontation – Group of Analysis and Confrontation of Punitive Discourses (DF).
– Center for the Study of Crime and Public Security – CRISP (MG).
– Public Defender’s Office of Rio de Janeiro.
– Global Justice (RJ).