More than thirty years after the recovery of democracy, the phenomenon of torture and ill-treatment in prisons and police stations continues to be a terrible and unfortunate reality. Despite the permanent denunciations of the international community and the efforts that have been carried out in recent years, in many confinement institutions the perspective that a detainee has of suffering an attack on his dignity remains true. In the context of the penal system, the persistence of torture and other illegal practices against detainees is the most urgent outstanding debt in the process of consolidating our democracy, also deserving of a State policy that articulates the necessary changes. Because it affects tens of thousands of people in a situation of confinement. Because they constitute attacks on the most precious legal assets of a rule of law. Because it also degrades the perpetrators and their state institutions. And because it destroys the little hope that the West continues to hold for the ideologies of re-socialization, by establishing conditions that fatally lead to recidivism, with an impact also on public demands for security.