Inadequate medical treatment in prison amounts to inhuman treatment under the ECHR
JUDGMENT
Bujak v. Poland 21-03-2017 (no. 686/12)
SUMMARY
Poor medical care in prisons. Inhuman and degrading treatment. The applicant, which was imprisoned had serious neurological and orthopedic problems that he was facing after a car accident. The Court condemned Poland by considering inhumane and degrading treatment the inadequate medical treatment in prisons, which has seriously aggravated the prisoner’s health and should have endeavored to be humiliated by other co-prisoners in breach of Article 3 of the ECHR.
PROVISION
Article 3
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Sławomir Bujak, is a Polish national who was born in 1954 and lives in Sarbice Pierwsze (Poland). The case concerned his complaint about inadequate medical care in prison for serious neurological and orthopaedic problems following a car accident. Following his extradition from New Zealand to Poland on theft charges, Mr Bujak was arrested in March 2010 and placed in detention on remand in view of the gravity of the offences against him and the risk that he might abscond; notably, he did not have a permanent place of residence in Poland and he had already been in hiding from the police in New Zealand, hence the necessity to extradite him. Mr Bujak’s appeals – on health grounds – against the ensuing decisions to extend his detention were subsequently dismissed; the courts considered that he could be treated in detention. However, in October 2011 doctors found that Mr Bujak’s detention was problematic as he needed surgery and a month later that further detention might pose a serious danger to his health or even life. He was therefore released in December 2011 in order to have surgery. The criminal proceedings are apparently still pending against him. From the beginning of his detention Mr Bujak had regularly consulted various doctors, had been prescribed a hard mattress, crutches, then a wheelchair. He alleged, however, that he had never received the mattress, that the wheelchair had been unsafe for use and that the Kielce Remand Centre in which he had been detained from March 2010 to February 2011 and then from April to December 2011 had not been adapted to the needs of disabled. He claimed in particular that, because of the inadequacy of his medical care in detention, his health had seriously deteriorated and he had had to suffer the humiliation of being assisted by other inmates, in breach of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Further relying on Article 5 § 3 (right to liberty and security), he also complained about the excessive length – one year and nine months – of his pre-trial detention.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
Violation of Article 3 (inhuman and degrading treatment)
No violation of Article 5 § 3
Just satisfaction: 5,000 euros (EUR) (non-pecuniary damage) and EUR 3,430 (costs and expenses)
