The paper aims to discuss the complex problem of pre-trial detention in Brazil and Latin America, fundamentally as a human rights issue. Pre-trial detention is intrinsically related to the mass imprisonment phenomenon that plagues the region, to the dysfunctionality of the criminal justice and to systematic violations of innocent s fundamental rights. Throught the analysis of empirical data, this paper shows that pretrial detention is one the faces of the mass imprisonment in Brazil, resembling Latin America s reality, on which such measure is prefered to detention after criminal prosecution. This paper studies the limits to pre-trial detention developed by the Inter-American System of Human Rights, as guidance to reform the Brazilian Legal Precautionary System in light of human rights. The new system, established by Law 12.403/2011, does not comply with IASHR parameters. Throught the study of conventionality control, this paper also shows that the imprisonment culture in Brazil is due not only to legislation s historical incompatibility with human rights but also to ignorance and resistance to international human rights laws. Through the analysis of the extensive and transcendent impacts of pre-trial detention, this paper reframes it as effective punishment and offers a perspective to its legal resizing. At last, it provides a path to the future abolition of pre-trial detention through the incremental recognition of its unbearableness.