Los derechos humanos de las personas privadas de libertad. Una reflexión doctrinaria y normativa en contraste con la realidad penitenciaria en Ecuador

Abstract

The human rights of persons deprived of their liberty is a doctrinal and normative analysis
in contrast to the Ecuadorian penitentiary reality. This reflection visualizes the contradiction
between the claims of guarantee and respect of the minimum rights of the people deprive
of liberty and the reality that is lived in the penitentiary centers of Ecuador, according to the
statistical report of 2017, where a high rate of overcrowding is observed, whose consequence
is the violation of the fundamental rights that assist the prison population. There is a special
legal relationship between the State and the prison population that turns that State into a
guarantor of the minimum fundamental rights that these people have that is in a situation of
double vulnerability. The need to establish minimum rights for the treatment of persons deprived
of their liberty is based on human dignity, an attribute that is not lost with the limitation of
freedom and hence explains the eagerness of the international community to urge governments
to that protect and guarantee through the legal norm, the fundamental rights that tend to
propitiate basic conditions that assure a dignified quality of life in prison. In conclusion, the
legal basis exists for the protection of the minimum rights of persons deprived of liberty, but
they have remained mere declaratory acts that require the will of the government embodied
in public policies that allow the efficiency and effectiveness of the norm.