Strasbourg court rules against Hungarian state in prison overcrowding case

Brussels, March 10 (MTI) – A Strasbourg court said that overcrowding in Hungarian prison violates human rights, in a ruling on Tuesday.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said that in the case of six applicants, prison conditions were in breach of the European Charter on Human Rights provision prohibiting humiliation or inhuman treatment of inmates.

In its non-binding ruling, the court ordered the Hungarian state to pay altogether 84,000 euros in damages to the applicants and to cover their legal costs.

The court also said that Hungary must draft a document within six months of the ruling entering into force on how it plans to eliminate conditions that violate the charter, and what measures it would take to prevent any further violations and to compensate the victims of overcrowding in the future.

The case concerns six Hungarian nationals who were detained in prisons in Baracska, Szolnok, Budapest, Sopronkohida, Palhalma and Szeged in various periods between 2006 and the present.

They complained about personal living space in their cells of between 1.5 to 3.3 square metres. Applicants also complained about other aspects of their detention, such as the fact that only a curtain separated their cell from the lavatory, that some cells were infested with insects and that there was inadequate ventilation or sleeping arrangements as well as limited possibilities for detainees to shower or to spend time away from their cells, the court said.

It said that the Hungarian government had not disputed the fact of overcrowding, but disagreed that this condition was in breach of provisions laid down in the convention. It is not for the court to specify how a state should organise its prison system or how to exactly remedy the contested circumstances of detention, the government had argued.

The court, however, said that overcrowding could be eased if the Hungarian justice system were to restrict the number of people in preliminary detention held in prison.

Monday’s ruling is appealable by both the applicants and the Hungarian state. Otherwise the ruling takes effect and has to be implemented within three months, the court said.

The ECHR currently has approximately 450 applications pending against Hungary concerning complaints about inadequate conditions of detention.

In reaction to the Strasbourg ruling, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee called for changes to Hungary’s penal policy and said that the government should turn to alternative forms of punishment in order to ease crowdedness in prisons.

Borbala Ivany of the Helsinki Committee said that crowdedness arises from Hungary’s insistance on imprisonment as primary punishment and added that there are more efficient ways that should be considered, such as house arrest. She also suggested that the judicial practice of applying the medium term for imprisonment as a standard should be eliminated, which would increase judges’ room for manoeuvre in defining sentences.

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Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters