An Open Regime to the Exterior

by Baron Bodissey

Our Portuguese correspondent Afonso Henriques has sent his translation of a news broadcast concerning a recent relaxation of Portugal’s penal practices. The new privileges given to inmates apply even to hardened and violent offenders.

A full transcript of the above video is at the bottom of this post.

Afonso adds these comments:

This is how fun politics are in Portugal! The Socialists of course are in power, and the old-style Communists with the new wave of Anarchists together got almost one fifth of the vote.

I found it funny that Takuan Seiyo recently mentioned Portugal in the Brussels Journal, saying, “All you had to know about the future of Portugal’s economy you could have predicted when its Maoist-Trotskyist Block [the left-wing anarchists, with a very bourgeois spirit let me add — AH] won 10% of the vote in 2009.” I think that all one needs to know about Portugal is that those who engendered the law described in the news report were in the oh-so-respectable Socialist Party, who had almost 40% of the votes.

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The not-so-Socialist Party: The Social Democratic Party finally has a new leader now, who may make it to the top in 2012 or later. Passos Coelho’s main deed is having been the greatest leader of the YSD (the “Youth” of the Social Democratic Party) but to me — and I’m virtually alone thinking this — all you need to know about that man, Pedro Passos Coelho, is what I found in this far right Portuguese blog, The Fire of the Will:

The true profession of Passos Coelho is “Why-ism”. “Why-ism” is an activity that democracy has been disseminating through the years. The “Why” is generally an individual who spends all his youth (youth that, in the case of these specimens, usually extends well into their thirties, a time when others are already men) in a party, at the service of the party, and getting served by the party: he works for the party and benefits personally and professionally from the party more than its merits would permit. Passos Coelho graduated in economics after many trials in a private faculty [usually lower quality — AH] when he was thirty-six years old (it makes sense, for the Why, unlike for the average man, the age of 36 usually marks the end of youth…) and still, without any justifiable curriculum vitae, he was able to get in “half a dozen” years being placed by the friends of the party to teach in another private institution and in the highest ranks of the companies of a group (Fomentinvest) dominated by their godfathers of the Social Democratic Party. No one with the curriculum vitae of this Passos Coelho would have been launched in such a professional trajectory if he had not been an important “Why”.

Transcript of the news video:

00:01.00 Nightly News with Bento Rodrigues.
00:08.00 Welcome to the Nightly News.
00:10.00 The new law of penal execution starts being implemented on Monday
00:13.00 and is already provoking controversy.
00:16.00 Any prisoner will be able to get out of jail during the day in order to work
00:20.00 as long as he has fulfilled a fourth of his sentence and some additional requirements.
00:25.00 This regally privilege applies also to the most dangerous prisoners sentenced for homicide.
00:32.00 Leonor Cipriano, sentenced to 16 years for killing her daughter
00:37.00 and hiding the body has already fulfilled more than one fourth of her sentence.
00:41.00 Marcos Fernandes, condemned to 25 years for shooting and killing two policemen
00:46.00 will reach one fourth of his sentence during the first trimester of 2011.
00:50.00 Leonardo Moreira, also doing 25 years for his 77 crimes of kidnapping,
00:56.00 rape, and sexual abuse of tens of children has already surpassed one fourth of his sentence.
01:02.00 These are three perpetrators of violent crimes that in the light of the new code of penal sentences
01:08.00 can have one foot in the “open regime” with access to the exterior,
01:12.00 that is, working or studying beyond the walls of jail during the day and returning to jail only to sleep.
01:19.00 But no prisoner can have that liberty without having one “tentative exit” first without incidents.
01:26.00 (Rui Sá Gomes, Director of the Prison Services): He was granted one prior
01:30.00 “jurisdictional exit”, and he complied religiously with all the conditions of that “exit” that the judge established…
01:35.00 On the other hand, it is to be expected that he does not disturb the victim…
01:39.00 It is to be expected that there are various conditions attached to the concession of that regime …
01:44.00 that he does not disturb the peace and social order.
01:49.00 And that it is predictable that he is not going to escape the fulfillment of his sentence.
01:52.00 With this new law it is now the responsibility of the Director of the Prison Services — and not the responsibility of a Judge —
01:58.00 to decide if a prisoner does or does not have access to the “open regime to the exterior”
02:03.00 (António Ventinhas, Union of the Judges of the Public Ministry): The General Director
02:05.00 of the Prison Services is politically appointed
02:08.00 and the judicial decisions are made by a judge who has no party affiliation, a career judge,
02:16.00 and there could be a complete “de-virtuation” of the decisions made by the courts.
02:20.00 (José Mendes, Union of the PSP, Public Security Police): We understand
02:23.00 that this decision should be made by a judicial entity,
02:25.00 namely the Court of Instruction of Penalties.
02:28.00 It is also worrisome enough that this regime is to be applied to all the crimes of blood.
02:34.00 I think that it does not make any sense. And another thing that is really worrying
02:40.00 is the control that is applied in the end, when those individuals move to the exterior, how is one such individual controlled…
02:45.00 The CDS-PP (the third largest party, and the party further to the right to have any representation, they got 10% in the last elections and the leader proclaimed that his goal is to create “the first non Socialist big Portuguese party”) which voted against the “Code of Execution of Sentences”,
02:49.00 presented today a proposal of alteration to the document.
02:53.00 They propose that the “open regime” be conceded only by a judge and to prisoners who have fulfilled three-fourths of their sentences, in the case of severe crimes.
03:01.00 (Nuno Magalhães, CDS-PP): This code is an outrage to the victims,
03:05.00 an offense to the security forces
03:09.00 and an insult to justice. It is an indignity to society.
03:14.00 They are the 200 prisoners who currently enjoy the “open regime to the exterior”.