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EVENT: President Alberto Fujimori last week promulgated a controversial law aimed at reforming the justice system.
SIGNIFICANCE: The law has provoked a clash between the executive branch and the highest levels of the judiciary. President Fujimori's critics fear that the reforms will further increase the extent of government control over the workings of the judicial system..
ANALYSIS: The justice system is widely recognised -- both within Peru and abroad -- to be cumbersomely bureaucratic, exceptionally slow in its procedures and riddled with corruption. President Alberto Fujimori presented it as a prime target for radical reform in his inaugural presidential address in 1990. He subsequently closed down the entire judiciary, along with Congress, in April 1992, justifying his palace coup (or 'autogolpe') on the need for thoroughgoing reform. Since then, the judicial system has three times been declared in 'emergency reorganisation'. So far, however, there has been little evidence of genuine improvement.
Overcrowded prisons. Apart from the huge backlog of cases in the courts -- some 10,000 in Lima's Corte Superior alone -- the lentitude and inefficiency in the administration of justice has created enormous problems for the prison system. There are a total of 98 prison establishments, ten of which are currently non-operational. Most of the prisons are run by the national police, 19 by the national prisons service (INPE).
Official figures show a total prison population of 22,210 nationwide, while the capacity of the prison system is no more than 17,400. The most notorious case of overcrowding is Lima's Lurigancho prison. Built in 1964 for 1,400 inmates, it currently houses 5,250. Only 5.5% of all Lurigancho's...