CAT/C/39/2
page 83
“(p) All state and federal organs responsible for the investigation of police
misconduct should compile statistics disaggregated by age, sex and race on the number of
complaints of torture received and investigations carried out. These statistics should be in
a public document which should be submitted to Parliament annually;”
356. The compilation of data for the formation of statistical indicators on police violence is a
fundamental factor for the control of police forces. Those indicators are useful to publicize the
work of the controlling agencies, but also to the adequate formulation and execution of public
security policies. Data from the Police Ouvidorias will be systematized and made available this
year at a data bank located at the Special Secretariat for Human Rights.
357. This system will standardize working routines and the categories used to classify
denunciations, procedures and results attained. It will have data on age, sex and color, so as to
enable research to be conducted on those bases. Finally, this system will represent an enormous
quality leap in relation to the annual report of Police Ouvidorias that is now published, including
because it will distinguish torture from abuse of force in police interventions, a item that in the
majority of cases is subsumed under “police violence”.
358. It is also important to compare those data with other indicators. In fact, the amount of
denunciations and the crimes to which they refer depend on variables such as the awareness by
the population of the existence of control agencies, the trust placed on them, the crimes must
publicized by the press. In this connection, the Brazilian Government has been investing in
methodological development for research of victimization and police lethality.
359. Furthermore, the Ministry of Justice, through its National Penitentiary Department, has
developed the Penitentiary Information System - Infopen, which is a instrument for the
integration of penitentiary administrative agencies all over Brazil with the objective of
permitting articulate action on the part of agents in proposing public policies.
360. The system is divided into Infopen Statistics and Infopen Management. The former is a
software available to all federated units by way of an agreement through which they become
responsible for the monthly feeding of the system. It is made up of statistical indicators that
allow the creation of data banks on penal facilities and prison populations. The latter is a new
software composed of several modules, which deal with all aspects of the administration of a
penal facility, the follow up of penal execution and the extraction of individual and consolidated
data. This program brings together all applications of the system, links individual data from the
penal population to be fed automatically into the statistical indicators, besides controlling, in real
time, administrative procedures and routines of the penal facilities.
“(q) The material conditions of detention centres must be improved without delay as
a matter of highest urgency and importance. The State party must allocate sufficient
financial resources to improve these conditions so that all detainees may be treated
humanely;”
361. As stated in the answer to paragraph 188, the Federal Government has been investing in
the re-equipment of penal facilities, through allocations of financial resources to the states of the
Federation, besides constructing new centers.
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