The highest legal body in Colombia has issued a formal decision on the rights of prisoners. After long discussion and debate, the constitutional court has removed from the law, regulating the country's prisons, an article banning the possession of pornography. Prisoners had taken the case to court claiming it violated their constitutional rights. From Bogota, Timothy Ross has the story.

Prisoners are claiming this as victory, though some critics, including prison guards, say there are other things which might be more important.

They cite jails so desperately overcrowded that inmates sleep in the corridors and showers, a shortage of 6,000 guards, installations where violence is so far out of control that an inter-gang fight last month left 14 prisoners dead, and where some inmates are better armed than the guards.

But the one thing the inmates insisted on taking to the constitutional court was their right to have pornographic posters, magazines and videos. And the court has decided that the constitution guarantees everyone's right to the free development of the personality, and any prohibition of porn is against the law.

Only a few weeks ago, a decision by the council of state had reversed the rule that conjugal visits only allowed prisoners to have sexual relations with their spouses.

Again, the right to free development of the personality was argued as meaning that sexual relations in jail can be with a lawfully wedded wife or a fiancee, or a girlfriend, or just a friend, and it's not the state's business to decide who you can sleep with, whether free or in jail.

Guillermo Carvajal, president of the Latin American Federation of Psychoanalysts, says erotic material may help reduce homosexual jealousies and rapes in jail, but he disagrees with the court about its interpretation of the constitution, because he doesn't think anyone develops themselves through pornography.

Prisoners interviewed by the leading Bogota daily paper have described this decision as a victory for their sexual rights, as the ban on erotica just made it one more item in the jail blackmarkets.

Psychologist, Hugo Mastrodomenico, says the court is right - repression causes more problems than permissiveness, even behind bars.
 

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