A/HRC/31/57/Add.4 19. The Special Rapporteur is concerned at the high number of pretrial detainees (40 per cent) and the amount of time spent in pretrial detention (five months on average),2 factors which contribute to severe overcrowding. 20. Generally, the Special Rapporteur notes a national reoffending rate of between 25 and almost 50 per cent, according to various but incomplete studies,3 and a concerning lack of effective social reinsertion programmes. 21. He notes that on 4 March 2015 the Chamber of Deputies of the Congress of Brazil created a commission to investigate the penitentiary system in Brazil. He hopes that the commission will be able to provide solutions to this pervasive challenge. Criminal law and procedure: drugs 22. Figures from the periodic bulletin called Infopen4 show that in 2014 no less than 27 per cent of all detainees faced drug-related charges. Among women and adolescents, the figures were 63 per cent and 24.8 per cent, respectively. Twenty-one per cent of detainees faced larceny or theft charges, a number which may be related to the first category. Many, if not most, of these cases could be dealt with by non-custodial measures, thereby reducing overcrowding. 23. The Special Rapporteur is aware of Law No. 11.343, which is aimed at directing drug users towards medical attention and treatment; however, he is concerned at reports from legal experts that law enforcement in practice leads to the incarceration of small-time dealers, drug addicts who trade only to support their vice, and drug users wrongly accused of dealing. This group saw a 320 per cent increase in the rate of detention from 2005 to 2012. These reports support testimony that the Special Rapporteur received from young men and children, who claimed they had been caught with de minimis amounts for personal use. The fact that the female prison population increased by 246 per cent between 2000 and 2012, compared with an increase of 130 per cent for the male prison population during the same period, also suggests an inadequacy in certain laws and an unevenness their application. 24. Brazil has decriminalized possession of drugs for personal consumption but, to determine the purpose of possession, courts do not apply a standard based on fixed quantities, but rather a presumption of intent to trade based on the police report of apprehension. 25. As almost all arrests are reported as “in flagrante delicto”, the police officer’s testimony is often decisive in determining the amount of time a suspect spends in detention until trial. The Special Rapporteur notes that a judicial practice more oriented to the objective of decriminalizing possession for private use would be likely to result in a significant reduction in overcrowding. Children and adolescents 26. By law, detention of children and adolescents is subject to principles of brevity, exceptionality and respect for the particular condition of children and adolescents in a given developmental phase. In practice, however, detention is not always used as a measure of 2 3 4 Data collected by the National Prison Department (not all states provide data) show that 60 per cent of detainees spend more than 90 days in pretrial detention. Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada, Reincidência Criminal no Brasil: Relatório de Pesquisa (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2015), p. 111. Available from www.infopen.gov.br. 7