02/04/2013
Half of federal inmates receive visits from relatives and friends virtual Autor: O Estado de São Paulo
Half of the inmates of federal penitentiaries makes virtual visits, according to a survey of the National Penitentiary Department (Depen). Partnership between the Public Defender and Depen Union (DPU), the initiative allows federal prisoners in four chains have contact with relatives, spouses and friends, even if the distance in an attempt to maintain emotional ties and facilitate rehabilitation.
The project also serves to conduct court hearings by videoconference, which already outnumber the audience attendance. In 2012, 232 prisoners out of a total of 446 (52%) underwent a total of 870 visits, involving 2215 families. Most contacts occur in Campo Grande and Porto Velho. Establishments are collected in federal maximum security prisoners high dangerousness to public safety.
During the virtual tour, the prisoner remains ankles with handcuffs, accompanied by a prison guard - which should not appear in the images. For security and confidentiality, the Depen not publish the list of inmates in the program.
The partnership Depen / DPU works like this: after Depen have bought appliances (58 videoconferencing equipment), the DPU uses the infrastructure installed in 27 units throughout the state capitals. Visits occur on Fridays - at the beginning of the implementation, in May 2010, it had reached DPU yield up the kitchen space to achieve the meetings, according to State cleared.
To the director general of Depen, Augusto Rossini, the award in 17. º Contest Federal Innovation in Public Management, on Tuesday, in Brasilia, is a recognition of a project that "respects human rights." "It ensures the inmate's constitutional right to have family contact and ensures peace in the prison," he says.
According to social workers interviewed by state visits made virtual prisoners improve behavior, through the maintenance of family ties or even the restoration of them - there are cases of imprisoned parents who had not seen their children for years.
The virtual tour is also a way for parents to avoid the constraints of invasive magazines, when they decide to go personally to the prisons. "The prisoners will return to society one day or another. If we do not do better (for them), surely the injury will end the whole society," says educator Jocemara Rodrigues, who works in Catanduvas.
The project initially met with resistance from the prisoners themselves and directors of prisons, who feared the possible transmission of messages to organized crime. According to the Depen there were operational difficulties in some units of the DPU, but hiring a banda higher data transmission has been provided.
"The design of the virtual tour humanizes the sentence. Displacement of federal prisoners to various states hinders contact with the family," says the general federal public defender, Cordoba Haman.
RAFAEL MORAES MOURA - BRASILIA
