54 the total cost to the Chilean treasury was lower than the amounts recorded in Peru and Mexico, keeping people in pretrial detention is much more costly, in relative terms, to Chile than to the other two States. 127. A study conducted in Argentina’s Federal Prisons Service, which in June 2007 held 5,424 inmates in pretrial detention, revealed that the total estimated cost to the State of pretrial custody was 295 million pesos a year (US$98 million). This figure includes maintaining the detainees, prosecution costs (investigation, trial, and public defense), annual spending on HIV monitoring following arrest, and lost contributions to social security. But the average total social cost that this entailed stood at more than 435 million pesos (US$145 million), which included the cost to the State identified above, and the costs to the detainees and their families (without taking into 178 account the costs to the community). 128. As already noted, people in pretrial detention suffer direct harm in terms of the quality of their family relations and their ability to earn an income, and they are also at a procedural disadvantage compared to individuals who face criminal prosecution from a position of liberty. This array of negative consequences arising from pretrial detention has a much greater impact on people who belong to groups historically discriminated, and this is even more serious when they belong to economically vulnerable groups, since they are also victims of other forms of social exclusion. 129. In addition to the monetary costs that pretrial detention represents to the State and society as a whole, there is another indirect cost when the State is found legally liable for damages due to the harm caused to citizens by the imposition of pretrial detention. This is clearly a very important element to be taken into consideration in countries such as Colombia, where domestic law offers mechanisms for citizens to bring this kind of legal action against the State. 130. This type of estimates about the monetary and human costs of pretrial detention should be used as the basis for a serious and objective discussion about the need and suitability of its use compared to other precautionary measures that could achieve the same procedural goals but with fewer restrictions of rights and at a lower cost, to both the State and the public. In addition, cost analyses are useful in identifying shortcomings, suboptimal practices, and even anomalies in justice and prison system public services. 178 Center for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth (CIPPEC), The Social and Economic Cost of Pretrial Detention in Argentina (El costo social y económico de la prisión preventiva en la Argentina), Working Document No. 29, 2009, pp. 23 et seq. This study also suggests that calculations of the costs incurred by the state should also include the indirect costs of prison overcrowding (p. 34).