Prison guards want to keep magazines of lawyers in jails

The National Union of the Prison Guard Corps (SNCGP) wants the search of lawyers at the entrance of the jails to be maintained, refusing the decision of the Directorate-General for Reinsertion and Prison Services (DGRSP) to authorize lawyers not to be subject to search when pass through the security gates.

The decision of the DGRSP came after the denunciation of the president of the Order of Lawyers (OA) that female lawyers were forced to remove their bras to enter the prison of Angra do Heroísmo, in the Azores.

“Security does not know ranks or categories, much less professional titles”, he told JN Frederico Morais of the SNCGP who added: “We cannot forget that not long ago a lawyer was caught with drugs in the Caxias prison”, he said.

It should be recalled that OA chairman Fernanda Almeida Pinheiro denounced, this week, the carrying out of “abusive searches” on several professionals who were going to visit their clients at the Prison Establishment (EP) in Angra do Heroísmo. According to Fernanda Almeida Pinheiro, several female lawyers were forced to remove their bras whenever the metal detector emitted a sound signal.

The situation, which reached the General Council of OA through a statement by a lawyer, led the president to ask the Directorate-General for Reinsertion and Prison Services (DGRSP) to end “immediately” what she considered to be a “practice violator of professional dignity”.

“In response to the presentation presented (…), the DGRSP issued an order in which it concluded that lawyers who go to the EP in professional practice, in view of the special prerogatives of their functions, should not be subject to the rules of review personal and private property reserved by law for in-person visits by inmates”, reads in a statement.