The lawyer ofCubalex Alain Espinosa warned about the replacement of the figure of “Precriminal danger” in thenew Penal Codeby post-criminal therapeutic measures that allow the indefinite confinement of defendants in psychiatric facilities.
The so-called “danger indices” in article 1.2 of thecurrent CP They are not mentioned in the draft of the new CP that is expected to come into force in April of this year. However, what at first glance seems like an elimination is a replacement by “post-criminal security measures” (introduced in art. 1.2 of the new CP) which, according to the lawyer's statements this Monday inThe mornings ofCyberCuba, “they are as dangerous as previous predictive measures”.
Thepre-criminal social danger It is an inclination to commit crimes established by the authorities in Cuba based on the social projection of people that allows them to be punished without having committed a crime. This penal figure has often been compared to the science fiction filmMinority Report, by Steven Spielberg, where individuals prone to committing crimes in the future are prosecuted, which violates human rights.
On the other hand, the post-criminal measures added to the sanctioning framework in the new Cuban CP constitute accessory measures to the sentence or sanction due to an incompatibility of the accused with the correctional regime, and they lack a defined time in the legislation. Among them, those of a therapeutic nature associated with mental illnesses stand out.
“One of the things that is specifically established in article 106 and up to 109 are therapeutic measures”, said the lawyer, adding that "they can be applied when it is considered that people are or are possessed by some type of alcoholism disorder, intake of psychotropic substances or similar effects or when they have some type of mental disorder."
According to art. 108, the sanction includes“admission to a hospital or health entity that provides psychiatric or addiction treatment services and external medical treatment”. Later he explains that“it extends for the necessary time”, which, in the lawyer's opinion, “places citizens in a very great state of defenselessness.”
For the lawyer, the imposition of this type of measures by the Court completely violates the accused to whom “surveillance by the bodies of the National Revolutionary Police can also be applied,” according to art. 109, as happened toLuis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who was held against his will in a health institution during a hunger strike:
“Since 2018, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has been harassed, being deprived of all his rights and all this gives them [the repressors] an enormous possibility of at some point through any type of rigged process through any type of of extensive interpretation of the law to decree him as a person who is not of sound mind and impose a therapeutic measure on him which, as we already see, is for the time they determine.”said the lawyer.
He also highlighted that“There is nothing that guarantees us that in all these treatments they cannot inoculate [a disease], for example, as they did withAriel Ruiz Urquiola” or that they can administer to the inmates “any type of medication that degenerates them psychologically or cognitively.”
Later, Cubalex's lawyer warned that minors imprisoned in the prison could suffer the same fate.11J “that we are already aware of several cases that have attempted to violate his physical integrity”, before which a therapeutic measure could be applied.
“They are basically creating the possibility of referring these people to a psychiatric hospital for the rest of their lives”, he warned. Likewise, he stressed that the elimination of pre-criminal dangerousness in the new CP is only symbolic, while the therapeutic post-criminal measures are based on the same precept as dangerousness, that is, that the accused "may be prone to reoffend or be a danger." for society.In other words, they disguised the figure of the pre-criminal danger index in therapeutic measures”, he sentenced.
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