Ordinary Prison Furloughs Lawyers

Nature and Purpose

Ordinary furloughs are an essential tool of individualized penitentiary treatment, oriented to prepare return to liberty, maintain family ties and foster sense of responsibility.

Legal Requirements

• Classification in second or third degree (not first).
• Completion of one quarter of sentence.
• Good prison conduct.
• Absence of breach probability.
• Absence of bad influence on other inmates.
• Commitment to comply with furlough prescriptions.

Procedure

Inmate request to Treatment Board; Technical Team report on requirement compliance; Board proposal; Central Authority approval or denial; judicial authorization from PSJ for furloughs over 2 days or for specially classified inmates.

Frequent Denial Causes

Denials usually invoke: breach risk, victims or witnesses at exit place, lack of roots, irregular conduct, substance use, pending causes.

Appeals

Against denial, appeal to Penitentiary Surveillance Judge within 5 days from notification. Against PSJ order, appeal to Provincial Court.

Legal requirements for ordinary leave and how they are proven before the Treatment Board

Ordinary prison leave is a sentence-execution measure governed by Article 47.2 of the General Penitentiary Law (LO 1/1979) and developed by the Prison Regulation (RD 190/1996). It is not an offence and carries no penalty: it is a tool to prepare the inmate for life after release. Three cumulative requirements must be met: classification in the second or third degree, having served one quarter of the sentence (calculated on the total being served, after any consolidation of sentences), and not displaying bad conduct. Each leave may last up to seven days, with an annual ceiling of thirty-six days in the second degree and forty-eight in the third degree, usually split across two half-year periods.

In practice, meeting the formal thresholds is not enough; what is decisive is establishing a favourable forecast. The Treatment Board assesses the inmate's prison record, conduct, participation in activities and programmes, family and social ties, a concrete destination and host arrangement for the days of leave, and the degree to which responsibility has been internalised. A prior report from the technical team is required. Where risk factors appear —prior breaches, a short stretch served, weak ties— they should be anticipated and offset with objective evidence: activity certificates, job offers, a verifiable release plan and documented family support. The defence can submit this material to strengthen the proposal and reduce the weight of unfavourable factors.

Procedure, competent body and system of appeals

The procedure begins with a proposal from the prison's Treatment Board. Depending on its length, authorisation falls to the Prison Surveillance Judge (Juez de Vigilancia Penitenciaria, JVP), the body that oversees sentence execution. The JVP rules on requests and reviews any administrative refusals. It is worth recalling that this is execution law: there is no penalty for an offence here and no limitation period for an offence, only short procedural deadlines to appeal and thresholds for serving the sentence already imposed.

JVP decisions may first be challenged by an appeal for reconsideration (recurso de reforma) before the same Surveillance Judge who issued the decision. Against the outcome of that reconsideration, an appeal (apelación) or a complaint appeal (queja) lies to the Provincial Court (Audiencia Provincial) of the place where the prison is located, under the rules governing surveillance-judge appeals. These remedies carry short deadlines and require carefully reasoned arguments that rebut the refusal point by point. The soundest strategy does not start at the final decision: it works from the proposal stage, ensures the file reflects the favourable elements, and preserves the option to renew the request when circumstances change, since a refusal does not extinguish the right to apply again.

Interplay with sentence accumulation, consolidation and the security period

Calculating the one quarter of the sentence —the threshold for ordinary leave— depends on how the sentence has been structured. Legal accumulation of penalties under Article 76 of the Criminal Code, processed through Article 988 of the Criminal Procedure Act, sets the maximum term to be served (triple the most serious penalty, with a general cap of twenty years, and exceptional limits of twenty-five, thirty or forty years). The consolidation under Article 193.2 of the Prison Regulation, a distinct and compatible figure, treats several sentences as one for penitentiary computation. Both directly affect when that quarter is deemed served.

Mechanisms also exist that can delay access to leave. The security period of Article 36.2 of the Criminal Code may, in certain cases, require half the sentence to be served before classification in the third degree. And Article 78 of the Criminal Code allows the court to order, where the term to be served is less than half the total imposed, that penitentiary benefits, leave, third-degree classification and the computation for conditional release refer to the full sum of penalties rather than the reduced limit. Reviewing the accumulation order and the sentence calculation therefore matters: an erroneous computation can wrongly advance or postpone the moment when the right to request leave arises.

Most-favourable-law review and practical timelines

When a reform of the Criminal Code changes penalties or the execution regime, Article 2.2 of the Criminal Code requires the more favourable law to be applied automatically to the inmate, even to final sentences already being served. The review may alter the term to be served or the accumulation limit and, with it, the moment at which the one quarter that opens the door to ordinary leave is reached. Any later reform must be analysed case by case to see whether it improves the inmate's specific position; not every legal change is beneficial, and the comparison must weigh complete regimes, not isolated articles. Where the adjustment affects the sentence calculation, it is advisable to seek the review and, if appropriate, recalculate the penitentiary thresholds.

On practical timelines, acting early helps: the Treatment Board's proposal, the technical team's reports and the Surveillance Judge's decision take time, and the half-year periods spread the annual allowance of days. If a request is refused, the appeal for reconsideration and then the appeal or complaint appeal before the Provincial Court carry short deadlines that should not be missed. In accumulation cases that affect the computation, the final decision may come through cassation before the Supreme Court. Planning each request in advance, with a well-documented file, is usually decisive in keeping the leave schedule moving without avoidable delays.