IV. USE OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OTHER THAN PRETRIAL DETENTION 221. The Inter-American Commission has said that respecting and upholding the right to personal liberty requires States to resort to depriving people of liberty only insofar as it is necessary to meet a pressing social need, and in a manner 319 proportionate to that need. Indeed, as stated by the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, “[a]ny deprivation of personal liberty, even if justified for certain reasons, such as the investigation of crime and the punishment of convicts, carries the risk of directly interfering with human dignity, as it severely restricts individual autonomy and makes 320 detainees powerless.” 222. The Principles and Good Practices stipulate that States shall, in consideration of the content and scope of the right to personal liberty, “establish by law a series of alternative or substitute measures for deprivation of liberty, duly taking into account the international human rights standards on the topic” (Principle III.4). These alternative measures to incarceration are to apply to the three basic stages of criminal proceedings: the pretrial phase, the trial itself, and the execution of the sentence. 223. The exceptional nature of pretrial detention implies that States shall use other precautionary measures that do not entail depriving the accused of liberty for the duration of the criminal proceedings. In addition, both the Inter-American Commission and other international human rights bodies have consistently recommended that the region’s States make more frequent use of precautionary measures other than incarceration as part of a strategy to reduce the number of people in pretrial detention and, consequently, their levels of prison overcrowding. 224. The Commission therefore proposes, inter alia, the following catalogue of alternative measures: (a) the accused’s commitment to submit to the proceedings and not to hinder the investigation; (b) the accused’s submission to the care or oversight of a given person or institution, in accordance with whatever conditions the court may set; (c) the obligation of periodically reporting to the judge or such other authority designated by the judge; (d) prohibition on leaving a given territorial jurisdiction without prior authorization; (e) surrendering of travel documents; (f) prohibition on attending specific meetings or visiting certain places, or on approaching or communicating with given persons, provided that the right of defense is not affected; (g) immediate departure from the domicile in cases of domestic violence in which the victim lives with the accused; (h) the provision, by the accused or a third party, of a suitable amount of bail; (i) monitoring of the accused by means of an electronic device that tracks or identifies his physical location; and (j) house arrest, in 319 IACHR, Country Report on Colombia: Truth, Justice, and Reparation: Fourth Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Colombia, 2013, Ch. VI(G); Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Annual Report to the Human Rights Council, E/CN.4/2006/7, adopted December 12, 2005, paras. 61-63. 320 UN, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, A/64/215, adopted August 3, 2009, para. 47.

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