CEDH · CASELAW;CLIN;ENG — 8 décembre 2015

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Lithuania - 29292/12, 40828/12, 69598/12 et al. Judgment 8.12.2015 [Section IV] Article 34 Victim Detainees awarded insufficient sums by domestic courts in respect of inadequate conditions of detention: victim status upheld Facts – The applicants, who were serving their sentences at correctional homes, complained about the conditions of their detention before the domestic courts, which found in all seven cases that domestic norms had been violated. The domestic courts awarded five of the applicants sums between the equivalent of EUR   60 and EUR 2,300 in compensation and made no award to the other two, considering that pecuniary compensation was not indispensable in order to protect their rights. In the Convention proceedings, all seven applicants complained that the conditions of their detention in the various correctional facilities in which they had been held had fallen short of standards compatible with Article   3 of the Convention. The Government argued that they could no longer be considered victims of the alleged violations as their cases had been reviewed by the domestic courts and decisions in the applicants’ favour had been adopted. Law – Article 34 (a)     Acknowledgement of a violation – In all seven cases the domestic courts had admitted a violation of the domestic legal norms setting out specific aspects pertinent to the conditions of detention. In most of the cases they had taken into account the principles laid down in the Court’s case-law under Article   3. Nonetheless, their decisions raised problems concerning the manner in which claims about conditions of detention were being dealt with. Thus in at least one case, the administrative court had ignored the essence of the applicant’s complaint by splitting his claims into the particular aspects of detention affecting him, instead of adopting a cumulative approach. Considering each element of the conditions of detention as a separate issue could easily lead to the conclusion that none of the complaints was, in itself, serious enough to call for compensation, even in cases where the general impact on the prisoner had reached the threshold of Article   3. Furthermore, in two of the cases the domestic courts had considered that a person’s suffering decreased with time. The Court was neither convinced by this line of argument, nor shared the view that the lack of intent to debase a prisoner alleviated the State’s responsibility for improper conditions of detention. In the light of these considerations, in spite of certain limited shortcomings, under the domestic law as interpreted and applied by the domestic courts, a claim for damages could in principle have secured a remedy in respect of the plaintiff’s allegations of poor conditions of past detention, in that it offered a reasonable prospect of success. (b)     Compensation awards – In the case of one of the applicants, the domestic court had awarded EUR 2,300 for improper conditions of detention. While still lower than the amount the Court had awarded in similar cases the administrative court had analysed the applicant’s complaints constructively in accordance with the standards flowing from the Court’s case-law under Article 3. The award had thus been sufficient. Moreover, the applicant’s complaints to both the domestic courts and the Court were confined to the conditions of an earlier period of detention and did not concern conditions at the correctional home. Thus the applicant could no longer be considered to be a victim of a violation of Article   3. In the case of two of the applicants, the domestic courts had made no award and had not allowed them to recover damages on proof of their allegations of inhuman or degrading conditions of detention for non-pecuniary damage. In the case of the other four applicants the sums awarded by the domestic courts were incommensurably small and not even approaching the awards usually made by the Court in comparable circumstances. In sum, the compensatory remedy for the conditions in which the six applicants concerned had been held was plainly insufficient. They therefore retained their victim status under Article   34. (c)     Preventive remedies – As regards to the Government’s argument that the applicants’ removal from inadequate prison conditions could be considered an effective remedy, the prison authorities’ decisions on the transfer of inmates between prisons had been to a great extent discretionary, based either on the inmate’s state of health, or on other “exceptional circumstances”. It was unlikely that either of those criteria had been triggered by issues such as cramped or insalubrious prison conditions. Furthermore inmates did not have a right to be transferred if they so requested. Given the financial difficulties of the prison administration, any attempt to seek an improvement of the conditions of detention from within the penal system would not have sufficient prospects of success. Even in the event of a judicial or administrative decision requiring the prison authorities to redress a violation of the applicants’ right to adequate living space and sanitary conditions, their personal situation in an already overcrowded facility could have been improved only at the expense and to the detriment of other detainees. Moreover, the prison authorities would not have been in a position to grant a large number of simultaneous requests, given the structural nature of the prison overcrowding problem and the absence of reforms to tackle it. Moreover, the new legislative measures in force since 1   July 2012 could not have benefited the applicants, as their complaints to the Court about the conditions of their detention mostly precede the date of the new legislation. As to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, his powers were restricted solely to making proposals and recommendations, without the possibility of issuing binding orders to the prison authorities to improve a prisoner’s situation. Furthermore, it had not been shown that the Ombudsman’s recommendations and proposals were capable of providing relief within reasonably short time-limits, which was another condition for a preventive remedy to be effective. Thus a complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman fell short of the requirements of an effective remedy because its capacity to have a preventive effect in practice had not been convincingly demonstrated. Thus the six applicants’ complaints about their conditions of detention were not manifestly ill-founded and were not inadmissible on any grounds. Conclusion : preliminary objection dismissed in respect of six applicants (unanimously). As regards the applications which were declared admissible the Court went on to find violations of Article   3 of the Convention in respect of four applicants and no violation of that provision in respect of the remaining two. Article 41: awards ranging from EUR 6,500 to EUR 10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage. (See also Scordino v. Italy (no. 1) [GC], 36813/97, 29   March 2006, Information Note   85 )   © Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court. Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes