Cuban law
How workers deal with crime
Following are excerpts from a talk and answers to
questions given by Ruben Remigio Ferro, president of Cuba's
Supreme Court. Ruben Remigio was a featured speaker at a public
forum in San Francisco in mid-October. His remarks were
translated by Mark Silverman and Nancy Charaga.
The event, titled "Crime and Justice in Cuba," was hosted
by the International Peace for Cuba Appeal. Also featured was
Mayda Goite, former assistant attorney general of
Santiago province. The two Cuban jurists visited San Francisco
as guests of the National Lawyers Guild national
convention.
There are of course profound differences between the justice
system of Cuba and the judicial system of the United States. In
the first place, their origins are distinct. But most of all,
it's based on the perception of how things should be organized
in the judicial system.
In Cuba we don't think of justice as apart from and above
the interests of the people. Justice is above all a service
that should be given to the people. It is a concept of justice
that corresponds to the people's interests. The people's
expectation of justice guarantees equality and justice.
In revolutionary Cuba, justice is administered by the
people. It's not just a slogan. In Cuba, the idea of an
impersonal judge doesn't exist. All the courts are composed of
various judges, among them professional judges and lay
judges.
Lay judges are peasants, workers, professionals, housewives,
university students, who form part of the panels along with the
professional judges. They have the same rights to make
decisions on the cases that are submitted to the courts.
The lay judges are elected by neighbors, by trade unions,
and by other mass organizations, and they serve for 30-day
terms. Their presence on the court assures that justice is not
just administered technically but that it reflects popular will
and sentiment.
The professional judges are also elected by assemblies that
represent the population.
That is how a person like me, son of peasants of very humble
background, and someone who is Black, can be selected to be
President of the Cuban Supreme Court.
We do not have cases of racial discrimination or
discrimination within the judicial system based on religion or
sex or social background.
There are judges who are not members of the Communist Party,
and there are judges who are religious. There are, I'm sure,
gay judges, there are women and Black judges.
Certainly, in the beginning of the Revolution, for sexist
reasons ... we witnessed attitudes against the rights of
homosexuals. But it has been many years since that situation
existed, and today in terms of justice, if a gay person
receives a sentence, it's not because he or she is gay but
because they committed a crime.
I can't answer if there are gay judges in Cuba, because no
one has to declare their sexual orientation to be a judge. The
most that I can say is that the President of the Supreme Court
is not gay. If I were, I would tell you very openly. It's not
something that needs to be hidden and people don't hide it in
Cuba. I do know some distinguished, famous people in Cuba who
are gay and they make it known because they want to affirm
publicly that they're gay.
Being gay in Cuba is not a condition that results in being
discriminated against. However, although in a general sense
there isn't racial discrimination or discrimination against
women or gays, that doesn't mean that there aren't people who
are racist, or prejudiced against women and gays. But luckily,
these people are a minority.
Prisoners: Salaries & home visits
The privation of liberty is given only to the most serious
crimes. Within alternative punishment is included economic
fines. Also, a person may be sentenced to work in a certain
social project. Of course they are paid in the corresponding
salary of that job. These are some of the alternative sanctions
that exist.
When someone is imprisoned for even the most serious crimes,
we operate on the notion that those who are being punished are
human beings.
A Cuban prison is not organized as a warehouse for people
who are shunned by society. Prisons are organized on the
principle of rehabilitating the man or woman who has lost their
way in terms of social conduct.
That's why one of the fundamental principles of the prison
system is that the prisoners work and study so that they can
prepare and learn skills that will be useful to them when
they're incorporated back into society.
The person who enters prison joins a system of progressive
steps of rehabilitation. In the beginning the imprisonment
rules are rigid, and little by little, person is given more
contact with his family and society.
For the work they perform while detained, the prisoner
receives a corresponding salary. Periodically they receive
permission to get visits from the family because it's part of
the basic idea that the family plays a key role in helping
prisoners re-integrate into society.
I'm not going to portray Cuban prisons as a paradise. Prison
is of course a necessary evil. There are people who have
committed crimes and they need to receive a sanction or
punishment for their crimes.
And yet, whenever it is possible to avoid incarcerating
someone in court, the tribunal looks for any alternative other
than imprisonment.
You cannot go through judicial proceedings if you're less
than 16 years old. And a long-standing policy is that if
someone is less than 20 years old, the offense has to be
extremely serious for the person to be sentenced to prison.
There is no comparison between what the Cuban government
dedicates to education and what it allocates to prison. We have
a relatively small number of people in the penal system.
With education, the Revolution dedicates all the resources
it can, because the future of the country depends on the
education of the country. And education is free. It's the most
important conquest of the Revolution.
A legal career is in very high demand among students. To
satisfy this demand, in addition to the regular law schools
with year-round courses, we've also set up a system where
someone can take a correspondence course and take the law
exam.
The enemies of the Revolution try to say that Cuba is
practically an entire prison, that prisoners are tortured and
starved, that it's practically hell on earth. That has nothing
to do with reality.
In fact, it is important to know: our country in the 1990s
went through a very hard economic situation. It was extremely
difficult to guarantee to the citizens the food and basic needs
of life. But even in that situation, the state made sure that
prisoners were guaranteed basic food necessities and items they
needed to live.
Death penalty: extremely rare
The death penalty is included among the criminal penalties.
It wasn't the Revolution that introduced the death penalty, it
existed before the Revolution.
The death penalty in the Cuban Revolution is applied in
extremely rare instances. As the Cuban Revolution continues
developing in the perfecting of our society, the application of
this penalty has become less and less necessary. ... It is
applied infinitesimally less than in the United States.
And in the very few and exceptional cases where it was
applied, it was for very grave crimes: for multiple murders, or
for someone who has murdered time and time again, or others who
have committed acts against the stability of the nation.
I'm not talking about ideological acts, but acts of violence
and sabotage. But again, I'd reiterate, only under exceptional
circumstances.
I think the fact that the death penalty still exists under
the Cuban penal system is because it is considered by a great
number of people as a necessary evil under the present
circumstances.
Cuba is blockaded, subjected to an implacable war, a
propaganda, economic, ideological war, as you all know.
Therefore Cuba can't disarm against such a dangerous enemy at
this moment.
But because of the profoundly humanist nature of the
Revolution, in my opinion, in the future when these conditions
and this threat disappears, the death penalty will also
disappear.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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