On November 15, 2022, the first three reductions in sentences for the retroactive application of the law of the only yes is yes. Since then there has been a trickle of reductions and releases that are not included, two and a half months later, in any official count. The norm eliminates sexual abuse and everything is unified in assault, reducing the minimum and maximum penalties when there are no aggravating circumstances. Once the sentences have been changed, prisoners have the right to have their cases reviewed and the new law applied to them if it is more beneficial to them, by application of the principle of favorable retroactivity that penal regulations have. But the reduction of the sentences depends on the criteria of the judge and, according to certain jurisprudence and the criteria of the State Attorney General’s Office, they do not have to be reduced when the punishments are within the range provided for that crime in the new norm.
With the data collected by EL PAÍS, around one in four sentences reviewed ended in a reduced sentence for a sexual offender. This calculation comes solely from the figures of the ten autonomies that have provided the three necessary data to obtain a percentage: the total number of revisions carried out so far (964), sentence reductions (216) and releases (19). Those communities that have only provided data on reduced sentences have been excluded from the calculation.
In the courts, the criteria are being disparate. The Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Equality and the General Council of the Judiciary state that they do not have statistics. In some cases, the Superior Courts of Justice (TSJ) of each autonomous community offer this data, which they compile with the communications that reach them from their different provincial courts.
The panoramic photo of the trickle down sentence reductions is still blurry. If the data analysis is extended to the 17 autonomous communities, the figures are incomplete. With the information obtained through the courts, this Friday, February 3, there are 369 convicts who have seen their sentences reduced, and 29 have been released from prison (in addition to two others, in Murcia and Madrid, who, although their release was proceeding after the review of their sentence, they remain in prison for other crimes). Nine Supreme Courts have provided EL PAÍS with the total number of sentences reviewed so far and the number of sentences reduced (in some cases warning that these are approximate figures); four have provided only the number of sentence reductions, and four more have not provided the data (in one of the cases EL PAÍS has resorted to calculations from other sources).
How many are left to review? It is not easy to know either, because no TSJ has data on the total number of convictions that they have yet to review, or they do not provide them. What is known is the number of inmates in prison for crimes against sexual freedom and indemnity: according to the latest statistics on the prison population of Penitentiary Institutions, from December 2022, there are 3,971 men (and 59 women).
From the data on reviews and sentence reductions collected in this way by EL PAÍS, it can be seen that at least 1,064 sentences have been reviewed, almost a quarter of the total.
Until now, with these incomplete numbers, the sentences would have been reduced by 35% of the cases reviewed, and the releases would represent 2.9% of the reviews. The percentages differ greatly between the different autonomies. While in Galicia, the sentence has been lowered in one out of every two sentences that have been reviewed (32 out of 62), in Extremadura it is less than one out of ten (8 out of 110 reviews).
Below is a review of the figures by autonomous community:
Galicia. have been reviewed 62 sentences, of which the sentence has been reduced in 32 cases.
Cantabria. There have been two releases and seven reductions.
Asturias. Two releases and 16 reductions.
Basque Country. Has been 104 revisions, in 46 the sentence has been reduced (including five releases) and in 58 the reduction has been denied. There are seven more revisions in the pipeline.
The Rioja. There have been two reductions of 58 revised sentences.
Navarra. Two reductions of seven conviction review resolutions. “On the other hand, the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra has not yet resolved any of the appeals filed against the decisions of the Hearing,” they add from the Navarre TSJ.
Aragon. The Aragonese Supreme Court has not responded at the time of publication of this article. According to the review carried out by Cadena SER this Friday morning, in Aragon there are nine reductions of 50 revised sentences and one release.
Catalonia. The Superior Court of Justice has not responded to the questions from this newspaper either. According to a count carried out by Europa Press on December 31, the reductions amount to 11, and the review of La Ser adds one release.
Castile and Leon. 21 reductions, 11 reviews denied and one release are the figures that appear according to the continuous shipments made by the TSJ of that autonomy, although it warns: “This does not mean that the resolutions sent are all that exist, since, on the one hand , some Courts have not provided information so far and, on the other, different media have published resolutions obtained through the parties that we have not provided. Therefore, we do not have verified and official data on the total number of resolutions that have been issued in Castilla y León”. In the case of this autonomy, according to the communications sent in November, when the sentence reductions began, it is possible to know the number of total resolutions that can be reviewed in five of the nine provinces: 20 in Soria, 7 in Palencia, 10 in Zamora , 20 in Burgos and 36 in Salamanca.
Madrid. It has reviewed 366 (218 ex officio and 148 at the request of a party) and has reduced the sentences by 41. There have been seven releases, 86 reviews have been dismissed, and the rest are still pending. With the percentage data given by the Madrid TSJ, a calculation can also be made of the sentences that remain to be reviewed. If the 218 ex officio cases reviewed represent “44.7% of the final sentences with an inmate in prison”, there are some 487 total sentences, so Madrid would have already reviewed 75% of the sentences.
Castilla la Mancha. Of the 79 reviewed, there have been 19 reductions, one release, and 15 denied, the rest are still pending.
Estremadura. Around 110 have been reviewed ex officio and, from them, eight reductions and one release have been derived.
Valencia. Has been 44 reductions and two releases. “There are no official data. But that is the figure we have in the press office of the TSJV ”, they add from that office.
Murcia. The Murcian Supreme Court has not responded to the request for information for the publication of this article. According to the review by the local press, there have been two reductions that are recorded in the region.
Andalusia. The autonomy includes Ceuta and Melilla in its count, which amounts to 64 reductions and two releases.
Balearic Islands. Of 94 reviews, 36 have been lowered and 55 have been denied, in addition to three releases. And they add from the Balearic Supreme Court: “The First Section still has some 49 matters pending to be reviewed and the Second Section some 41, so around 90 procedures remain to be looked at and studied. It must be taken into account that the magistrates and magistrates have started with the cases with a prisoner ”.
Canary Islands. The TSJ of the Canary Islands does not have the statistics and reported last week that they were not going to have it “soon”. To the request for information this Friday, he has not yet responded. As stated in the General Council of the Judiciary, there has been a release, and the recount of Europa Press post at least 14 rebates.
