27 60. As of December 2012, the city of São Paulo had a prison population of 195,695, of whom 190,828 were in the custody of the penitentiary system; of this number, 62,843 (33%) were in pretrial detention and, of that number, 1,613 (2.6%) were women. In addition, there were another 500 people or so in pretrial detention at 83 state police facilities. 61. According to the Rio de Janeiro State Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture, that state’s proportion of pretrial detainees is 36% out of a total prison population of some 33,000 people, and the rate with which pretrial detention is used among adolescents stands at 38%. One of the characteristics of the arbitrary use of pretrial detention in that state is the large number of people held for minor offenses (“with a low danger potential”), who can remain awaiting trial for months or even 84 years. The state of Pará, in the Amazon region, had a total 10,989 inmates in the custody of the prison system at the end of 2012, of whom 5,092 (46.33%) were awaiting 85 trial (4,638 men and 454 women) and 5,897 (53.66%) had already been sentenced. 62. In turn, Chile has one of the comparatively lower percentages of people in pretrial detention (approximately 25%), but has a significantly high rate of 86 incarcerations, with 305 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. 63. Regarding Colombia, the Commission has received information indicating that pretrial detention is also used to “coerce people facing trial to cooperate by admitting charges or presenting evidence against other suspects” and that, for that reason, “prosecutors request pretrial detention, even when they do not have sufficient evidence.” In other words, incarceration is sometimes used as tool for the 87 investigations. There is strong pressure from society, the media, and even public 83 Infopen Statistics, National Penitentiary Department of the Ministry of Justice (Depen/MJ), available in Portuguese at: http://portal.mj.gov.br/main.asp?View=%7BD574E9CE-3C7D-437A-A5B622166AD2E896%7D&Team=&params=itemID=%7BC37B2AE9-4C68-4006-8B1624D28407509C%7D;&UIPartUID=%7B2868BA3C-1C72-4347-BE11-A26F70F4CB26%7D. For a more detailed analysis of the breakdown of pretrial detainees in the city of São Paulo, see: Tecer Justiça: presas e presos provisórios na cidade de São Paulo / Instituto Terra, Trabalho e Cidadania e Pastoral Carcerária Nacional; Heidi Ann Cerneka, José de Jesus Filho, Fernanda Emy Matsuda, Michael Mary Nolan, and Denise Blanes (eds.), São Paulo: ITTC, 2012. 84 Response to the questionnaire for the IACHR’s thematic Report on Pretrial Detention in the Americas, Rio de Janeiro State Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture, November 2, 2012. Figures from: National Penitentiary Department (DEPEN). 85 IACHR Regional Meeting of Experts on Pretrial Detention, May 9 and 10, 2013, presentation by Dr. Ana Claudia Bastos de Pinho, available in Spanish at: http://www.oas.org/es/cidh/ppl/actividades/prisionpreventiva.asp. Dr. Bastos de Pinho stated that “Possibly the most serious problem facing the Brazilian prison system is the indiscriminate use of pretrial detention.” 86 Based on the total figure for people deprived of liberty presented by the State and Chile’s estimated total population of 17,402,630 inhabitants as of June 30, 2012. National Statistics Institute of Chile, Demographic Statistics 1.2. 87 DPLF, Insufficient Judicial Independence, Distorted Pretrial Detention: The Cases of Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, 2013, p. 98.