E/CN.4/2001/66/Add.2 page 39 eight years if the person sentenced is not a recidivist, while an open regime may be granted to those whose sentence is lower than or equal to four years, if the person is not a recidivist. Recidivists must serve their sentences in a closed regime. 113. Articles 43 and 44 of the Penal Code provide for the application of alternative sentences which have an obligatory character. This means that if the conditions for an alternative sentence exist, the judge is obliged to pronounce it. Those conditions are as follows: the prison sentence should not be more than four years, the crime was not intentional or it was committed without the use of violence or serious threat of violence; and the person to be sentenced has not previously committed an intentional crime. The application of alternative sentences must also take into account records of previous behaviour, social conduct, intensity of guilt and circumstances of the commission of the crime. Alternative sentences range from payment of reparation or fine to community work, or work for charity, or temporary suspension of rights. 114. The fact that alternative sentences are applicable only for sentences of not more than four years, coupled with the tendency of the police to look for confessions to more serious crimes than those actually committed, contribute to measures of deprivation of liberty. It is reported that judges seem to avoid imposing alternative sentence even in the case of first offenders. According to NGOs as well as some public officials and public prosecutors whom the Special Rapporteur met, this is again due to the increasing pressure from public opinion for strong measures to be taken against criminality and want criminals to be kept in jail. The São Paulo State Secretary for Public Security stressed that the prevailing culture in the judiciary is not a culture of human rights when it comes to fighting against criminality, and referred to a popular Brazilian saying that says “good criminals are dead criminals”. 115. There also exists a system of progression sentences by which detainees can pass from a strict regime to a lesser one, provided that they behave in accordance with the internal disciplinary rules. The penal execution judge is responsible for sentence progression system, as well as remission and unification of sentences and release on parole.28 It must be noted that one sixth of a sentence of more than eight years must be served in a closed regime before the detainee may benefit from the progression system. One complaint that the Special Rapporteur heard from several detainees was that the time limits for the conversion of one detention regime to another usually pass without any appropriate measures being taken. Furthermore, according to the Prison Ministry in São Paulo, up to 90 per cent of the requests for sentence progression are refused, allegedly on the basis of a short interview with a psychologist and pre-established reports. The State Secretary for Justice of Pernambuco expected the law to be amended soon to ensure that prisoners progress from closed to semi-open regime on the basis of the time served, with the possibility for public prosecutors to ask judges to issue an opinion if there are grounds to delay the progression, for example for security reasons. It is believed that a draft law has been presented by the Minister of Justice to that effect. 116. Furthermore, article 31 of the LEP provides that all persons deprived of their liberty must work according to their ability and capacity. Detainees should thus have their sentences reduced by one day for every three days of work. In practice, in places of detention visited by the Special Rapporteur, the facilities did not permit all prisoners to work, either because of problems relating