Summary
Overcrowding deteriorates living conditions in prison and can contribute to serious consequences for people deprived of their liberty, including death in custody.
Pretrial detention is used for extended periods, while mechanisms such as parole, progression of regime and extra-penal license are denied or applied belatedly.
Cubalex proposes independent supervision of prisons and the periodic publication of prison data by establishment to make the functioning of the system verifiable.
This September, Cubalex presented a contribution to the call for applications of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, intended to develop a technical guide on practical measures to reduce and prevent overcrowding in prisons.
The organization's contribution responds to the mechanisms to reduce the time spent in prison, and analyzes two of the main factors that, according to Cubalex monitoring, unnecessarily prolong imprisonment in Cuba: the use of pretrial detention as a rule in practice and the obstacles to accessing early release mechanisms.
Overcrowding is not just a problem of capacity or infrastructure. When too many people are held in spaces that do not guarantee adequate conditions, unsanitary conditions increase, living conditions deteriorate, and risks to the safety and lives of those in state custody rise.
In Cuba, moreover, it is impossible to accurately determine the current magnitude of the problem because the State It does not publish verifiable data on prison population, facility capacity, pretrial detention, or releases..
In 2022, the United Nations Committee against Torture confirmed The lack of verifiable statistics and reports of overcrowding in Cuban prisons. The latest available external figure, corresponding As of 2020, the prison population stood at around 90,000 people, equivalent to 794 people per 100,000 inhabitants.
Given this lack of transparency, Cubalex monitoring has consistently recorded complaints describing overcrowding as a structural condition of the prison system.
Cuban law provides for alternatives to prison
Overcrowding cannot be explained solely by a large prison population. The Cuban legal system includes mechanisms designed to prevent imprisonment or reduce the actual time spent incarcerated.
The Law of Criminal Procedure It establishes that pretrial detention is exceptional and contemplates other precautionary measures. The legislation also provides for sanctions that can be served without imprisonment, including house arrest, correctional labor without confinement, community service, and restrictions on liberty.
During the execution of the sanctions, there are also mechanisms such as the parole, substitution of the sanction, progression of regime and extra-penal license. However, the existence of these alternatives in legislation does not guarantee that they will work in practice.
For Cubalex, The problem lies not only in what the law allows, but in how the authorities apply those mechanisms.
Extra-penal license: an exit that may come too late
Cuban legislation also permits extra-penal license when an illness, disability or other circumstance is incompatible with the inpatient regime.
However, Cubalex has documented cases in which medico-legal reports recognize the seriousness of an illness and yet consider that the person continues to be "compatible with the prison regime".
There have also been reports of obstacles in accessing clinical documentation and cases of people resorting to hunger strikes to obtain a medical evaluation.
The most serious consequence occurs when release is granted only when the person is in a critical situation.
In its monitoring of deaths in custody among the February 1, 2024 and June 30, 2026, Cubalex He identified at least seven cases in which the extra-penal license was granted shortly before death., when the deterioration of health was already critical.
A measure designed to prevent a person from remaining incarcerated when their health condition is incompatible with confinement loses much of its function if it is applied only in the final stages of an illness.
READ ALSO: Report on deaths in custody in prison facilities (2024–2026)
Collective releases do not replace permanent reforms
Cubalex also warns that collective releases and pardons may produce temporary relief, but do not change the rules that determine who enters prison, how long they stay there, and under what conditions they can be released.
The negotiated releases in January 2025 raised the number of people released from prison for political reasons from 34 in 2024 to 245 in 2025. However, there were subsequent revocations of parole and new imprisonments.
Likewise, the pardon announced on April 2, 2026 For 2,010 sanctioned individuals, it did not modify the rules on provisional imprisonment, parole, or non-penal license.
Therefore, Cubalex maintains that Specific measures for early release cannot replace permanent changes that reduce the use of imprisonment and guarantee effective mechanisms to decrease its duration.
Cubalex proposals
Based on documented obstacles and applicable international standards, Cubalex proposes measures aimed at reducing both unnecessary imprisonment and prolonged stays.
These include:
- To make the exceptional nature of pretrial detention verifiable, requiring the authority to demonstrate a current and individualized risk and explain why no alternative is sufficient.
- Establish early judicial control, with adversarial hearing, periodic review ex officio, effective appeal and maximum periods of provisional imprisonment.
- Convert compliance with the requirements for release into an obligation of automatic review., with a hearing, legal assistance and the possibility of challenging prison reports.
- Allow the person deprived of liberty, their defense, their family, the Prosecutor's Office or the court to request the substitution of the sanction, without depending exclusively on the initiative of the prison authority.
- Create an early and independent humanitarian pathway, with medical evaluations carried out by professionals outside the Ministry of the Interior.
- Prevent political opinions, civic activity, communications with human rights organizations, or complaints about prison conditions from being used to deny or revoke prison benefits.
- Publish prison data periodically by facility, including population in pretrial detention, duration of the measure, applications and decisions on parole, progression of regime and extra-penal licenses.
- Ensure independent oversight of prisons, with unrestricted access and ability to audit information on prison conditions and deaths that occurred in custody or shortly after release from prison.
Reducing overcrowding requires addressing the rules and practices that unnecessarily prolong deprivation of liberty, and not simply increasing the capacity of the prison system or providing for exceptional releases.
It is essential that the Cuban State allow a independent supervision of penitentiary establishments, with unrestricted access, and periodically publish disaggregated data that reveals how many people remain deprived of their liberty, for how long, and how the mechanisms designed to reduce that time are functioning. This lack of transparency prevents an assessment of the extent of overcrowding and also makes it difficult to determine whether the alternatives provided for in the legislation itself are working.
The Cuban legal system already includes mechanisms that can prevent imprisonment or reduce the length of incarceration. The challenge is to make those guarantees effective, limit discretion, and subject decisions that affect people's freedom to independent and reviewable controls.
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