New system to deal with cases of prison violence in Costa Rica 

After four years of preparation, the System of Registration, Communication and Comprehensive Care for Victims of Institutional Prison Violence (SIRCAVI) begins with training sessions for public officials. Through the initiative of the Inter-American Association of Public Defenders (AIDEF), and the support of the European Union EUROsociAL+  programme, the project aims to alleviate the mistreatment and torture of people incarcerated in prisons.   

For the inauguration of the SIRCAVI, various European and Costa Rican authorities have participated in an act in which Fernando Cruz Castro, President of the Supreme Court of Justice of Costa Rica, recognised that the system “plays a vital role in achieving the implementation of the protection of rights as inherent as the right to dignity, to life and to health”. He also denounced the conditions in which people deprived of liberty find themselves: “Currently there is a real situation that demonstrates that prison overcrowding, overpopulation of penitentiary centres, and the difficulty in satisfying basic needs, afflict the majority of penitentiary centres nationwide.”  

In this regard, Juan Carlos Pérez Murillo, the Director of the  Costa Rican Public Defence Office, indicated that “the SIRCAVI is a fundamental tool in the identification, reporting and follow-up of cases of violence in the Costa Rican prison context.”   

For her part, the Minister of Justice and Peace, Fiorella Salazar Rojas, added that the participants in the programme have a common goal: “to guarantee the human rights of those who are in the prisons of Costa Rica”. The action is of vital importance at the present time “due to the impact that the pandemic is having on the access to rights of the most vulnerable groups, and in particular, in persons deprived of liberty”, as indicated by the General Secretary of the FIIAPP, Inmaculada Zamora.