The Ombudswoman, Tena Šimonović Einwalter, has recommended to the Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation that a strategy for preventing inmate-on-inmate violence be urgently adopted. This recommendation had previously been included in the Ombudswoman’s annual reports and has now been reiterated in response to the injury of a pre-trial detainee at the Split Prison, an incident reported by the media earlier this year.
She also warned that, in the specific case, appropriate preventive measures were not taken to ensure respect for the fundamental human rights and safety of the pre-trial detainee.
What did the Ombudswoman’s investigation reveal?
In her investigation, the Ombudswoman found that the actions of prison staff following the incident were appropriate. However, adequately addressing the issue of inmate violence requires more than reactive measures—it demands proactive prevention. In this particular case, the offence for which the pre-trial detainee was suspected had garnered public attention and provoked widespread negative reactions, which made it foreseeable that he could face threats and/or physical assault from other inmates. Despite this, upon his arrival at the prison, he was placed in a cell with eight other individuals, indicating that potential risks to his safety were not sufficiently considered and that appropriate preventive measures to ensure his protection were not taken.
What are the state’s obligations in this context?
According to the Constitutional Court, when state authorities knew or ought to have known that there was a real and immediate risk to an inmate’s physical integrity from another inmate, those authorities have a duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent such a risk (U-III-4281/2017).
The European Court of Human Rights has also emphasized, in numerous cases concerning inmate violence, that states are obliged to take appropriate preventive measures to protect the physical and mental integrity and well-being of persons deprived of their liberty.
This obligation stems from the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Court’s case law indicates that a failure to take such measures may constitute a violation of the right to life and the prohibition of torture, as provided by the Convention.
Accordingly, the state is obliged to protect the life and safety of every inmate and ensure that no one is subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment while in the prison system. The project “Violence in the Prison System”, jointly implemented by the Central Office of the Prison System within the Ministry’s Directorate for the Prison System and the Department of Criminology of the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Zagreb, should contribute to this goal.
The Ombudswoman has repeatedly, including in her annual reports to the Croatian Parliament, stressed the need to develop a national plan to combat this form of violence. The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has also called on the Republic of Croatia to do the same, in its reports following visits to Croatia in 2017 and 2022.
Further information on the state of the prison system and the protection of the rights of persons deprived of liberty can be found in the Ombudswoman’s 2023 Annual Report, in the chapter on the Prison System.