"This is a big problem (effective reintegration of inmates), prison services have many difficulties, one of the difficulties, for example, is the issue of rehabilitation of convicts", said Luzia Sebastião, in statements to Lusa.
"And I am talking not only about rehabilitation, because he has already served his sentence and left prison and returned to the community, but above all about judicial rehabilitation, therefore, going to clean his criminal record, because if not, this has effects and in our system has effects at the level of political rights", she explained.
The judge, who was speaking on the sidelines of the National Conference on Justice Reform, Penitentiary System and Human Rights, held in Luanda, highlighted the need for judicial rehabilitation.
"Because a person sentenced to a sentence of more than three years can neither run for President of the Republic nor for deputy, but for this it was enough that these electoral laws and the Constitution stated that he cannot run as long as he has not been rehabilitated, this is not, therefore, it is this set of issues that matter and that have to do with rights", she argued.
For the retired magistrate, criminal justice is an important issue: "Basically, we are a constitutional State that intends to be of law and democratic. So, as a constitutional State, whenever we talk about fundamental rights, whenever we talk about human rights , it is necessary to start from the Constitution".
Luzia Sebastião also highlighted the Angolan constitutional wealth in the field of rights granted to inmates, noting, however, that penalties must have a purpose.
And the "great purpose of penalties", according to the system that we have been building, which the criminal and criminal procedural system, he explained, "is the resocialization of the person who committed the crime".
"Therefore, we need him to go to jail, but to return to the community and not commit a crime again, that is, the reintegration of the person who was convicted must be a fundamental point of all the work of the penitentiary service", concluded the judge.
The conference was held in Luanda by the Center for Human Rights and Citizenship (CDHC) of the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Angola.
