This document discusses Brazil's use of collective habeas corpus petitions to challenge systemic rights violations against vulnerable groups in detention. It notes that the Brazilian Supreme Court granted the first collective habeas corpus petition in 2018 to protect the rights of pregnant women, mothers, and young children in provisional detention. Since then, additional collective habeas corpus petitions have been granted to address issues like juvenile justice, minor drug offenses, and prison conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The document argues that collective habeas corpus remedies are aligned with collectivizing rights and addressing the systemic nature and causes of illegal acts within prison systems.

1. Advocating for Release & Protecting the Rights
of People Deprived of Liberty
Nathalie Fragoso
PhD in Law (USP), LLM (Master of Laws-Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München).
Member of the Human Rights Lawyers Collective - CADHu since 2015.
09/15/2020

2. The incarceration of women in
Brazil
- 36.929 women imprisoned (INFOPEN/2019); 57,67%
are black women;
- 47.174 women imprisoned (CNJ-BNMP);
- 888.092 people arrested/401259 provisional
prisoners (CNJ-BNMP);
- 755.274 (INFOPEN/2019);

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Habeas Corpus 143.641
- 1st collective Habeas Corpus admitted by the STF (Brazilian
Federal Supreme Court)
- Granted on February 20, 2018 in historic decision.
- "In favor of all pregnant women, puerperal women or mothers
of children up to 12 years old under provisional arrest, as well as
in favor of the children themselves"
- Action presented by the Human Rights Lawyers Collective
(CADHu)

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Habeas Corpus 143.641
- As with other individual rights, violations of the right to freedom
can go beyond the individual's isolated sphere, reaching a large
number of people. The abusive act, in these cases, acquires a
supraindividual dimension.
- If the abusive act has a collective impact, an individual
constitutional remedy obscures the causes, weakens the
patients, and leads to the persistence of illegality.

5. “ "The imposition of preventive imprisonment on
these women, i.e., their confinement, before a
criminal conviction, in such establishments of
deprivation of liberty, by removing their access to
prenatal health programs, regular childbirth and
postpartum care, reasonable conditions of hygiene
and self-care, and depriving their children of
adequate conditions of development, constitutes
an illegal act repeatedly committed by the
Brazilian Judiciary. "
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6. - The precariousness of prison facilities, their inadequacy to women's needs, and
the lack of attention to conditions for the exercise of reproductive rights
characterize inhuman, cruel, and degrading treatment. The temporary
imprisonment goes beyond the constitutional limits of the intervention of the
persecutorial-punitive power.
- It also constitutes a discriminatory act: significant increase in female
imprisonment associated with drug trafficking, the strict criminal discipline of
trafficking, as well as the selective public security have a disproportionate impact
on women.
- inadequacy of prison + discriminatory criminal policy, due to the disproportionate
impact on women and their families
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Habeas Corpus 143.641

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Since then
- Habeas Corpus 143.988, Def/ES (juvenile Justice)
- Habeas Corpus 596.603/ SP (minor drug offences)
- Habeas Corpus 118.536/SP (prison conditions- period of sun-bath)

8. “
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The collective defense of the right to freedom by means of a
collective habeas corpus is aligned with the tendency to collectivize
rights and the systematic aspect of illegal acts, especially when
prison structures are at stake.
The importance of isonomy, reasonable duration and procedural
economy, in its various dimensions of rationalization of the use of
resources, time and efforts, as well as considerations about the
(ir)reasonableness of demanding the impetration of an habeas
corpus by each and every person affected, speak in favor of a
collective remedy.
In its collective manner, habeas corpus gains a range that enables it
to respond effectively to the causes of violations.

9. - HC 596.189 ( risk groups)
- HC 575495/ MG (g)
House arrest granted to convicts in two prisons in Uberlândia who,
despite being in the semi-open regime and having external work,
suffered a setback in the conditions of serving their sentence after
the beginning of the pandemic of the coronavirus.
- HC 570440/ DF (d)
Habeas corpus, in favor of all the people arrested, and who come to
be arrested, who are in the risk groups of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Habeas Corpus in the COVID-19 pandemic

10. Thank you!
Any questions?
You can find me at:
▫ nathalie.fragoso@gmail.com
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