Prison law lawyers in Barcelona

Ordinary permisos de salida (prison leave) require, under art. 47 LOGP and art. 154 RP, that the person is classified in second or third grade, has served a quarter of the sentence, has not shown bad conduct, and has a report from the Equipo Técnico (the prison's Technical Team). The ceiling is up to 36 days a year in second grade and 48 in third. We prepare the application, work on unfavourable reports and appeal refusals. You can read more about prison leave.

The grade determines the regime a person lives under: closed, ordinary or open. Classification is reviewed periodically and can be appealed to the Juzgado de Vigilancia Penitenciaria. We look at whether it is worth applying the flexibility principle of art. 100.2 RP, or the routes available for cases of serious illness or old age. We build every file on concrete facts: family ties, employment, programmes completed and a plan for life outside. More detail on tercer grado (third grade, Spain's open or semi-liberty regime).

Art. 90 CP governs the suspension of the remainder of the sentence: as a general rule, tercer grado and three quarters served, with the early form at two thirds and the qualified grounds for bringing it forward further. Art. 91 CP covers the very seriously ill with incurable conditions and people over seventy. We prepare the file and the supporting documentation from outside. See our page on libertad condicional (parole).

A punishment is not just solitary confinement or losing exercise time: it contaminates prison leave, classification and parole for a long time afterwards. The prisoner has three working days to file a defence statement (art. 244 RP) and five working days to appeal the punishment to the Juzgado de Vigilancia Penitenciaria (art. 248 RP). We step in from the charge sheet onwards, not later. More on prison disciplinary proceedings.

Where there are several sentences, art. 76 CP sets maximum limits on time to be served, and art. 988 of the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal (the Criminal Procedure Act) sets out the procedure for legal aggregation before the competent court. That is different from the administrative merging of sentences for prison calculation purposes. We review each case one by one, because a miscalculation can add years to a sentence. More on aggregation of sentences.

Distance from the family weighs heavily: it makes visits expensive, spaces them out and, in time, ends them. We handle transfer applications on grounds of family ties, health, safety or treatment, both between prisons in Catalonia and across Spain, and we deal with international transfers under the applicable conventions. See prison transfers.

The Juzgado de Vigilancia Penitenciaria is the judicial check on what happens inside. Classifications, refused leave, punishments, calculations of time served and regime decisions are all appealed to it. Its orders can be challenged by recurso de reforma (review by the same court) within three days and by appeal within five, under the fifth additional provision of the LOPJ. We draft and argue those submissions before every prison supervision court in Spain.

Art. 89 CP allows prison sentences of more than a year imposed on foreign nationals to be replaced, wholly or in part, by deportation, with specific rules for EU citizens and a ban on returning for five to ten years. We analyse whether it is in the person's interest in each case, weighing family ties and children. More on deportation instead of prison.