The difficulties of visiting relatives in prison due to distance are, under certain conditions, a breach of the family life of the prisoner.
JUDGMENT
Labaca Larrea v. France 02-03-2017 (no. 56710/13, 56727/13 και 57412/13)
SUMMARY
The difficulties of visiting relatives in prison due to distance are, under certain conditions, a breach of the family life of the prisoner.visit him, since the ability of his family members to visit him is necessary for the continuation of his normal family life. There is no violation of Article 8 in this case because there were frequent visits of relatives to the prisoner and there were no general problems in this respect.
COMMENT
If there are significant problems regarding the contacts between relatives and detainees due to great distance of prisons or otherwise creating exceptional difficulties in visits and rendering them almost impossible, then this constitutes a violation of the family life of the prisoner who is entitled to the smooth continuation of the family of life.
PROVISION
Article 8
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicants, Urko Labaca Larrea, Ione Lozano Miranda and Alejandro Zoboran Arriola, are Spanish nationals who were born in 1986 and 1981. In March 2011 they were arrested in French territory and sentenced to six, five and nine years’ imprisonment respectively for various offences. After initial periods of detention in prisons in the Paris area, they were later transferred to the Lyon-Corbas prison.
Considering that the latter prison was situated too far from the residences of their families, forcing the latter to travel a great distance to visit them, the three applicants sent a letter to the investigating judge asking him, pursuant to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to take the requisite action to put an end to that situation, which in their view infringed their right to lead a normal family life. In the absence of a reply from the investigating judge, the applicants repeated the contents of their letter in the form of a request for a procedural act. On 15 February 2013 the investigating judge issued an order rejecting the request for a procedural act. On 6 March 2013 he sent the applicants a letter explaining the reasons for their detention in the Lyon-Corbas prison. The three applicants appealed against the order of 15 February 2013. On 26 March 2013 the President of the Investigation Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that there was no need to refer the appeal lodged against the order to the Investigation Chamber.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
Article 8
The Court reiterated that the Convention did not secure any right for prisoners to choose their place of detention and that their separation and distance from their families were inevitable consequences of detention. Nevertheless, the fact of detaining a person in a prison so far from his family that it was very difficult, or even impossible, for them to visit him could, under certain circumstances, amount to an interference with the prisoner’s family life, given that the ability of the members of his family to visit him was essential for his continued family life.
The Court noted that the applicants did not complain of being subjected to any special prison regime restricting the number of family visits they could receive or requiring the supervision of such visits.
They had not been subject to any measures restricting or limiting their right to receive visits or to use the telephone. On the contrary, the case file showed that the applicants had had very frequent visits from and telephone conversations with their families.
The Court therefore considered that the applicants’ transfer to the Lyon-Corbas prison had not been such as to significantly impede their right to receive visits. There was no evidence that the journeys which relatives had had to make had raised any insuperable, or even particularly difficult, problems.
The Court therefore held that the disadvantages complained of by the applicants were insufficient to amount to an “interference” with their right to respect for family life under Article 8 § 1 of the Convention. The complaint was manifestly ill-founded and had to be rejected.
Article 13
The Court reiterated that Article 13 of the Convention was only applicable if an applicant had an “arguable claim” under another provision of the Convention or the Protocols thereto.
Having declared the complaint under Article 8 inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded, the Court considered that the applicants had no “arguable claim” in respect of which they could assert their right to an effective remedy within the meaning of Article 13 of the Convention. Accordingly, it found no appearance of a breach of that provision. It followed that that part of the application was also manifestly ill-founded and had to be rejected.
The Court unanimously decided to join the applications and declared them inadmissible.
