The Federal Court condemned the São Paulo government for not being the State Committee and Mechanism for Prevention and Combating Torture (MEPCT/SP) and determined a period of six months to present a detailed plan of its implementation. 
In the decision, The 8th Federal Civil Court of São Paulo orders the São Paulo government to inform, in the requested plan, the thought structure and the budgetary resources that will cover the expenses of the activation of the agency. The deadline begins to run with the res judicata.
The 8th Court also asks the government to indicate the number of positions that it will need to keep the committee running, which includes the staff that will be responsible for periodic visits to all places of deprivation of liberty in the state. Visits should occur at least once a year.
The plan must first pass through the agencies of the National System for Prevention and Combating Torture and Civil Society Institutions.
The decision also sets a period of ten days for the state government to present a schedule with the stages of compliance with what was defined by the Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region (TRF3).
The Union was also sentenced and instated to cooperate and accompany the São Paulo government in the implementation of the committee. From the federal level, what the court charged were monthly meetings and the documentation, in a report, of the progress of the work.
In a statement, the Attorney General of the State of São Paulo stated that the TRF3 special body understood that there is no obligation to maintain this type of committee and that “its implementation cannot be determined by court decision”.
“Due to the suspension of an injunction previously granted, the sentence also does not have effects until the final judgment of the case,” he added.
Sought by Brazil agencythe Attorney General of the Union (AGU) confirmed, also in a statement, that it was summoned and will “analyze the procedural strategy it will adopt”.
Prison population
According to a balance released in early February this year, the prison population in Brazil It is over 850,000 people, a number that corresponds to the third largest in the world. Since 2000, this number has almost quadrupled and the vacancies deficit is currently going on.
Lawyer Rosa Cantal recalls that the Bill 464/2018which creates the torture prevention mechanism, was presented by state deputy Carlos Bezerra Jr. (PSDB), but was filed during the management of Governor João Doria.
“The mechanism was going to help a lot, being on the spot in prisons, judicial asylums and even in therapeutic communities, to see in these places if there is torture. This knowing that the current concept of torture does not only cover physical violence,” says Rosa Cantal.
She recalls that the concept of torture is expanded within prisons. “Torture, in addition to psychological violence, occurs in a penitentiary, for example, with spoiled food, sunbathing, bad health, with the issue of unhealthiness.”
The Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, which shared the survey, also stressed that about one third of the prison units was evaluated with bad or poor conditions, between 2023 and 2024. The portfolio pointed out that since 2015, the sum of allegations of torture and mistreatment is over 120 thousand.
