Life imprisonment has no positive sense of reintegration
The Minister of Justice participated today in an event on “Life imprisonment: its increasing use throughout the world and possibilities for reform”, held in the margins of the 14th United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Criminal Justice.
Minister of Justice, Francisca Van Dunem, during the intervention
Francisca Van Dunem recalled that life imprisonment was abolished in Portugal in 1884, after the abolition of the death penalty in 1852 for political crimes and in 1867 for common crimes, and, it was with the 1822 Constitution, that the abolition of all sanctions considered cruel started.
With the 1976 Constitution, adopted after the fall of a long dictatorship, it became clear in Article 1 that Portugal is a sovereign Republic based on the dignity of the human person, which must be respected and protected. This constitutional principle imposes the prohibition of the death penalty, life imprisonment, torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, slavery and forced labour.
The dignity of the human person also underlies the fundamental principles of criminal law, which justify the application of sanctions, such as the principles of criminal prevention, proportionality, guilt and the resocialisation of offenders. In this context, stated the Minister of Justice, the Constitution expressly prohibits lifelong sanctions or sanctions of an unlimited or indefinite duration.
By imposing a maximum limit of 25 years on the sentence, the Constitution aims to ensure an opportunity for reintegration after the sentence has been served.
Life imprisonment would deprive the convicted person of any hope of future integration into society, constituting an unnecessary punishment, and representing, in this perspective, a violation of the human dignity protected by the Constitution.
At the same time, the imposition of excessively long sentences should be the subject of reflection, since such penalties mean that the convicted persons leave prison at an advanced age, stigmatized by society and without any possibility of reintegration.
In recent years, we have seen trends advocating a general increase in the duration of criminal sanctions, and the introduction of life imprisonment, in response to the growth of various types of crime, said Francisca Van Dunem. She also referred that this issue arises from time to time in Portugal, driven by populist discourses about security, amplified on social networks and which find in the hardening of the State’s response the solution to economic and social crises, now aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This matter is not on the government’s agenda, she concluded.
Organised by Penal Reform International, the event addressed the reasons for the increase of life imprisonment at international level, the existing challenges for the protection of human rights and the possibility of reforming criminal justice systems. It was co-sponsored by Portugal, Austria, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the University of Nottingham, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.
See the full intervention of the Minister of Justice: