A/HRC/31/57/Add.4 declaration or confession from the victim or a third party; (b) to provoke an action or omission of a criminal nature; and (c) as a result of racial or religious discrimination. Moreover, it is considered a crime of torture to submit someone under one’s custody, power or authority to the use of violence or serious threat of intense mental or physical suffering as a means of applying personal punishment or as a preventive measure. 13. The penalty for such a crime varies from two to eight years in prison. Those who absent themselves before torture occurs, when they were able to prevent it or ascertain that it would occur, are subjected to imprisonment for one to four years. However, if serious bodily harm results from the crime of torture, the penalty is 4 to 10 years, and if the result is the death of the victim, the prison sentence may be increased to 16 years. Punishment may be increased by one sixth to one third of the sentence if the crime is perpetrated (a) by a public agent; (b) against children, pregnant women, the impaired or adolescents; or (c) in conjunction with kidnapping. Paragraph 6 of article 1 of the Law on Torture determines that crimes of torture are not subject to bail, grace or amnesty. 14. The Law on Torture is applicable to the whole territory of Brazil; however, the crime of torture is not a federal crime and, accordingly, each State is responsible for applying the law and enforcing judicial sentences. 15. This lack of federal power of enforcement with regard to the punishment and prevention of torture at the state level results, in practice, in a lack of effective implementation of the Law on Torture, due, inter alia, to resource constraints, political priorities or complicit officials. IV. Assessment of the situation A. General Overcrowding 16. According to the Ministry of Justice, Brazil’s prison population is 711,463 prisoners (including house arrests), making it the fourth largest prison population in the world per capita, at 193 persons per 100,000. Thirty years ago, the prison population was about 60,000. Recent figures show that it increased by 74 per cent during the period 2005-2012. In 2012, 60.8 per cent of all inmates were of African descent and 54.8 per cent were under the age of 29. 17. Despite an investment of 1.2 billion Brazilian reales by the federal Government to create additional prison capacity, the continual increase in the prison population, combined with an official penitentiary capacity of merely 376,669 prisoners, has created a penitentiary system marked by endemic overcrowding – in one State at 265 per cent beyond capacity. 18. The Special Rapporteur strongly encourages the Government to focus on decreasing the prison population, rather than on increasing prison facilities. He strongly supports alternative measures to incarceration; however, he expresses concern at the position aired by some authorities that such measures ought to apply to domestic violence and that the Maria da Penha law (which raised the penalties for domestic violence) is an obstacle to the use of alternative measures. The Special Rapporteur strongly disagrees, stressing that domestic violence is a very serious crime. Any attempt to address the issue of overcrowding by returning to impunity for violence, including against women and children, would be a mistake. 6