A prisoner refused to go to his grandmother’s funeral because the van that was to carry him was small and did not have a safety belt!
JUDGMENT
Jatsõšõn v. Estonia 30.10.2018 (no. 27603/15)
SUMMARY
A detainee in prison in Estonia asked for permission to go to his grandmother’s funeral. The prison authorities granted him a permit and a small bus for his transportation. As soon as he saw the bus, the prisoner refused to board and be transferred to the funeral because the available space on the bus was small (0.51m) and did not have a seat belt. He unsuccessfully brought an action for damages before the national courts. He complaint before the ECtHR of degrading treatment. Strasbourg considered that the lack of a seat belt and the insufficient space available in the transport car combined with the short time of the journey did not take the necessary gravity to characterize the overall behavior of prisons towards the applicant as degrading. The ECHR did not find any violation of the ECHR.
PROVISIONS
Article 3
Article 8
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Indrek Jatsõšõn, is an Estonian national who was born in 1985 and lives in Estonia.
The case concerned his complaint about the cramped and unsafe conditions in a prison van intended to take him to his grandmother’s funeral.
In 2013, when he was serving a prison sentence for robbery and violence against a prison official, he was granted prison leave to attend his grandmother’s funeral.
However, he did not go to the funeral because, as he later complained to the prison authorities and in court proceedings, he had sat in the van compartment, found it too small and unsafe as there was no seat belt, and had decided to go back to prison. His complaints for damages were dismissed by domestic courts. The courts found in particular that Mr Jatsõšõn had refused to be transferred and had therefore never been subjected to the conditions he described.
Relying in particular on Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights, Mr Jatsõšõn complained in particular that the small compartment in the prison van without a seat belt or handles had been inhuman and degrading and had made him miss his grandmother’s funeral.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
The ECtHR noted that the applicant had an area of 0,51 square meters in the transport car. This space is considered as inappropriate for transporting a person, no matter how short the duration of the transfer.
However, the Court has held that, in order that an infringement of Article 3 exists, it can not be confined to a numerical calculation of the square meters available to the prisoner. Only an integrated approach to specific conditions can provide an accurate picture of reality for the person being transferred
The Court draws attention to the Government’s argument that in this case the requirements concerning the size of the seat and the available space for the feet in Directive 2001/85 / EC have been complied with. The Court considers that while transfers of inmates inevitably imply some restrictions in relation to the transfer of persons who are not detained, in view of the possible security risks, the basic conditions for the transfer of prisoners should not be below the minimum level that the state authorities are committed to providing for the overall population.
Regarding the absence of a seat belt, the ECtHR recently found that the absence of a seat belt can not lead to a violation of Article 3 (see Voicu v. Romania of 10.06.2014). While it does not rule out that under certain conditions and in combination with other factors the lack of safety belts or handholds may raise concerns under Article 3, it does not, however, find any aggravating factors in this case.
In the light of the foregoing, and pointing out that in the present case the applicant would only be transferred for a short period of time, the ECtHR does not consider that the treatment in question has attained the minimum severity required by Article 3 of the ECHR.
Consequently, no violation of the ECHR has been found (echrcaselaw.com editing).
