The lawyer loaded with files enters the parlor in a Catalan prison. Has to prepare a trial with a prisoner who is risking his future. They speak through an intercom and with a glass in between. The cabin is not very big. The lawyer takes one of the tens (or hundreds or thousands) of pages that make up the summary and sticks it to the glass for his client to read. It is a scene that has been repeated several times during the years of Carlos Martínez’s professional career. “It was not at all practical. If they are in preventive detention and the client is risking a significant sentence, this situation makes it difficult to right of defense and the preparation of the trial,” he says.
With this measure, lawyers will be able to better prepare trials with their clients
This practice is on the way to extinction. Catalonia has launched a pioneering measure in the State: lawyers may enter with their computers portable in prisons, although with certain limitations. In this way, they will review with their clients not only documents, but videos, for example those recorded by security cameras or interrogations, and audios, such as telephone conversations intercepted by the police.
The Department of Justice and the Catalan Council of Advocacy have reached an agreement to implement this “historic” claim by legal professionals. From this same month of September, lawyers who want can access the Brians 1 prison, in Sant Esteve de Sesrovires, with their computers. The ‘counsellor’ Gemma Ubasart and the secretary of penal measures, Amand Calderó, announced this Friday that this possibility will be progressively extended to all prisons in Catalonia and will be fully implemented next November.
“In this way, the right to defense of inmates is reinforced and better working conditions are guaranteed for lawyers,” stressed the head of the Justice portfolio. It also “reinforces the rights of inmates to communicate with the outside world,” with “the necessary nuances to ensure the privacy, security and treatment” of prisoners.
He thinks the same Encarna Orduña, president of the Catalan Council of Advocacy, which brings together the Catalan professional associations: “With this system the right of defense is facilitated and prioritized.” The secretary of alternative measures, Amand Calderóspecifies: “It is putting technology at the service of inmates and lawyers.”
Digitized causes
The possibility of lawyers entering prisons with computers is completed with another method that has been working for a long time: communications with lawyers through videoconferences from professional schools. The idea is that in the future the connections will be from the same offices, without the need to travel.
Now, a big step has been taken to make lawyers’ visits to their clients (more than 23,000 a year) more effective. “We had a problem. Justice tends to zero paper. The causes, the evidence, the tests are increasingly digitalized and they did not let us enter with the computer,” says lawyer Carles Martínez. They could only access the center with papers and pens.
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“We had two options: the first was to reproduce the test to the client or print everything. And enter the parlor with the file, which can occupy several volumes, and show the papers through the glass and with the intercom telephone hanging around the neck But it was not practical at all,” explains the lawyer. This sequence does not have to occur again.
But the lawyers will agree with some limitations, such as covering with a tab the computer camera, do not use an external hard drive, do not use an internet connection and the prohibition of recording images and audios. Therefore, lawyers will store the judicial file they need on their computer. During the trip to the booths, the device must be turned off and inside a bag or briefcase and the lawyers will sign a commitment document of compliance with the requirements. The mobile phones and tablets They will still be banned.