DH Institute: Promotion, Research and Intervention in Human Rights and Citizenship

Develop strategic measures aimed at the disincarceration of pre-trial detainees in the state of Minas Gerais, with a focus on gender and ethnic-racial perspectives.

• Raise public awareness on the situation of pre-trial detainees and on the need to implement public human rights policies for the prison population. Defend the fundamental rights of detainees through litigation and advocacy actions in the executive, legislative and judicial powers and other social actors.
• Provide technical and legal assistance to pre-trial detainees and their families. Identify women prisoners whose profile falls under the terms of the decree of April 12, 2017 and act legally with a view to obtaining pardon or the commutation of sentences.
• Identify representative cases of recurrent failures in criminal management systems that culminate in the fulfillment of sentences in serious disagreement with the law.
• Mobilize and provide capacity training to detainees’ family members, groups, and associations on the criminal justice system, making them institutionally stronger.
• Develop communication and awareness campaigns about mass incarceration and the situation of pre-trial detainees through regular and social media.
• Elaborate information material on the rights of detainees and of their families and re-publishing material produced by LabTrab in the past.
• Build and feed the interactive online platform, easy access, visualization and use, with informative content on the prison situation and criminal justice.
• Systematize information produced by projects led by DH Institute and LabTrab on prison system.
• Analyze letters sent by prisoners, family members, penitentiary agents and prison system technicians and identify priorities, demands, and possibilities for strategic intervention and the elaboration of proposals.

The chaos in which the Brazilian prison system is situated is characterized by a political /institutional organization marked by the permanent and systematic violation of the rights of the imprisoned population and of their families’. Specifically, this chaos is reflected in the following situations: a) the context of a huge and growing number of pre-trial detainees and detainees in general with violations of their civil and political rights and a punitive selectivity that targets: the young, Black and poor, which are economically, socially and culturally more vulnerable; b) irregularities and violations present in the daily routine of the prisons, including overcrowding, degrading and cruel treatment, lack of proper healthcare, lack of attention to women, pregnant detainees and their children, physical and psychological violence against the LGBTQI population, lack of accessibility for people with disabilities, lack of a care policy for the elderly detainees, a precarious care destined to foreign prisoners and the lack of adequate treatment for people with mental disorders; the perpetuation of the processes beyond the necessary time; lack of access to information for the families of imprisoned people on their rights; e) the fragility and disarticulation of the groups in defense of incarcerated people.

Created in 2007, the DH Institute: Promotion, Research and Intervention in Human Rights and Citizenship is a non-governmental, non-profit organization which main objective is to contribute to the constitution of a society in which Human Rights are exercised as a whole, providing social justice and citizenship. Thus, the DH Institute has a multidisciplinary team, with researchers and social actors that through different life paths opted for a joint action in the construction and articulation of new methodologies and psychosocial, economic, environmental, cultural and legal-political interventions for the realization of Human Rights and Citizenship.

National Human Rights Movement.
Brazilian Committee of Human Rights Defenders (CBDDH).
State Committee on Attention to Migrants, Refugees, and Stateless Persons Coping with Human Trafficking and for the Eradication of Slave Labor.
State Forum for the Fight against Child Labor and the Protection of Adolescents.
Forum of Human Rights of Minas Gerais.
State Human Rights Council.
Minas Gerais State Antimanicomial and pro-Mental Health Forum.
Interinstitutional Forum to Fight against Domestic Violence, Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children and Adolescents of Minas Gerais.