Maíra Rocha Machado, a professor of the Academic Master's program in Law and Development of FGV’s Sao Paulo Law School (Direito SP), participated in the event “Prisons and Judges in Latin America – An analysis of the unconstitutional state of affairs in Brazilian and Colombian prisons”, sponsored by Universidad de los Andes, in Bogotá, on September 26.

Alongside professor Libardo Jose Ariza Higuera, Machado presented the paper “Quando o estado de coisas é inconstitucional: sobre o lugar do poder judiciário no problema carcerário” [When the state of affairs is unconstitutional: the role of the judiciary in the prison problem], in which she systematizes and compares the decisions of the Colombian and Brazilian constitutional courts that declared the unconstitutional state of affairs of those countries’ prison systems.

In Brazil, the topic is addressed by ADPF (Action Against the Violation of a Constitutional Fundamental Right) 347, reported by Justice Marco Aurélio Mello, aiming to discuss the countless human rights violations in the country’s prisons.

According to Machado, the state of Brazilian prisons has a number of similarities with many others on the continent, which leads us to think about the possibility of exchanging experiences and learning from other countries.

The paper also seeks to analyze the contributions of the Colombian decision on the future decision to be made by the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF), which is the potential of the requests made by the authors of ADPF 347 to promote the release of prisoners, and also analyzes the effects of declaring the unconstitutional state of affairs in the STF and Sao Paulo State Appellate Court (TJSP) rulings.