REPORT ON THE USE OF PRETRIAL DETENTION IN THE AMERICAS I. INTRODUCTION A. Context and purpose of this report 1. For more than a decade, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (hereinafter “the IACHR”, “the Inter-American Commission” or “the Commission”) has considered the arbitrary and illegal use of pretrial detention a chronic 1 problem in many countries of the region. In its recent Report on the Human Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty in the Americas, the IACHR listed the excessive use of pretrial detention among the most serious and widespread problems in the region and noted that this dysfunctionality in criminal justice systems is in turn the cause of other problems such as overcrowding and the failure to separate detainees awaiting trial from the convicted. 2. Along with other structural problems linked to the respect for and the guarantee of the rights of persons deprived of liberty, this situation has also been systematically identified in the Americas by United Nations monitoring mechanisms, whose mandate includes safeguarding the human rights of persons under criminal prosecution and/or deprived of liberty, such as: the Human Rights Committee (HRC), the Committee against Torture (CAT), the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT), the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) and the Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (SRT). 3. Similarly, other qualified actors such as the United Nations Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (ILANUD), have deemed that “[e]specially serious within the issue of the accelerated increase of prison populations is the case of prisoners awaiting trial”; therefore, “the region must continue its efforts to maintain more prudent levels of unconvicted 2 prisoners.” The Report on the High Level Expert Group Meeting on the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the treatment of prisoners, which was held in Santo Domingo, laid out some of the common causes at the regional level for the high proportion of prisoners awaiting trial, such as delays in bringing criminal defendants to trial, the absence of adequate legal advice, the influence of public opinion and the “tendency for prosecutors and judges to order that those awaiting trial should be held in 1 IACHR, Fifth Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Guatemala, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.111. Doc. 21 rev. adopted April 6, 2001 (hereinafter “Fifth Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Guatemala”), Ch. VII, para. 26. Already four years earlier, the IACHR had said that pretrial detention constituted “a serious problem in several OAS member countries.” IACHR, Report No. 2/97, Case 11.205, Merits, Jorge Luis Bronstein et al, Argentina, March 11, 1997, para. 8. 2 United Nations Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (ILANUD), Crime, Criminal Justice and Prisons In Latin America and the Caribbean: How to Implement the United Nations’ Rights and Duties Model, 2010, pp. 76-77.