José Ramón Prado Bugallo, Sito Miñanco, one of the historic Galician drug traffickers, has gone to the Supreme Court to demand his right to enjoy the
vis a vis
that he was granted as a reward in prison for doing extraordinary work, but which were suspended as consequence of the covid-19 pandemic. The Criminal Chamber rejects his request because the prison alleges that there are not enough rooms to recover the face-to-face contacts lost during the pandemic and there is no legal basis or doctrine that protects the inmate, but the judges suggest that he present a new petition in the to demand that that prize be replaced by another.
Sito Miñanco is in prison for drug trafficking and money laundering and in recent years he has spent time in the prisons of Zuera (Zaragoza), Estremera (Madrid) and Dueñas (Palencia), where he is currently. In the Zaragoza center he accumulated several rewards as provided for in article 263 of the Penitentiary Regulations for acts "that demonstrate good conduct, spirit of work and a sense of responsibility in the behavior of inmates" and that can be exchanged in different ways. . Miñanco chose to add private communications with direct contact, the so-called
vis-a-vis
, but these were suspended due to covid-19 in March 2020. In December of that year he was transferred to Estremera and, once face-to-face contacts were resumed , they allowed him to recover some of those he had obtained as a prize. But in this prison he accumulated more and, when in April 2022 he was sent to the Palencia prison, the prison management denied him the benefits he had pending, alleging that it was impossible to offer that possibility to all prisoners because there were no enough rooms, days or human resources to organize it.
A Penitentiary Surveillance Court and the Provincial Court of Palencia ratified the prison's decision, and Miñanco took the case to the Supreme Court, which dismissed his appeal and refused to force the prison to provide him with the
visas
that he won because the prison's decision It is not an individual measure that only affects him and cannot be considered “unmotivated or arbitrary”, but rather it affects all prisoners and is based on organizational reasons. Miñanco's defense presented as jurisprudence an order from a prison surveillance court that ruled in favor of an inmate in a similar request, but the Supreme Court explains that the resolutions of a surveillance court are not valid as contrasting jurisprudence before the high court. .
The magistrates, however, open the door for Miñanco to obtain other rewards other than those
vis-à-vis
the prizes he won. “The limitations indicated by the development of recovery from
vis-à-vis
pending do not prevent that, once this type of reward has been rendered ineffective for reasons beyond the control of the inmate, the possibility of replacing the reward with another to which the system of points gained reach,” states the ruling, for which Judge Juan Ramón Berdugo was the rapporteur. The court considers it "logical" that, as the inmate's defense argues, the right of an inmate to an ordinary visit that corresponds to them periodically is not comparable, for the purposes of recovery after the suspension caused by the pandemic, to which is granted in an extraordinary way as a reward for work done.
“It seems logical to maintain that the ordinary ones that have been suspended due to the impossibility of carrying them out during the pandemic are lost, but that those obtained as rewards should not necessarily be lost to the extent, at least (if they cannot be enjoyed at another time) to which They may be replaced by another type of reward of a different nature,” the court notes. In addition to extraordinary communications, the Penitentiary regulations contemplate rewards as a priority for participation in scheduled outings for cultural activities, reductions in the sanctions imposed, study scholarships or donation of books, cash prizes and “meritorious grades.” The Supreme Court invites Miñanco to submit a new request to be granted any of them.
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