The place of detention of prisoners should be close to their home
JUDGMENT
Voynov v. Russia 03.07.2018 (no. 39747/10)
SUMMARY
The case concerned a complaint brought by a prisoner that he had been sent to serve his sentence in a prison 4,200 kilometres from his home town. He has not seen his partner since 2014 and has never seen his four-year-old daughter. The Court found that there was nothing in the Government’s submissions in the case to convince it to depart from its findings in a judgment of 2017 on the same issue. In that judgment the Court held that the Russian legal system did not provide sufficient safeguards against abuse as concerned decisions on the location of incarceration, in breach of prisoners’ right to respect for their family life.
Moreover, it was not satisfied that a procedure suggested by the Government would have provided an avenue for the applicant in the present case to adequately complain about the breach of his right to respect for family life. Nor was there any other remedy available to him at national level to complain about being sent so far away from his family to serve his sentence.
PROVISIONS
Article 8
Article 13
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Timur Voynov, is a Russian national who was born in 1985. He was convicted in 2009
of drug-related crimes and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment. He has been serving his sentence
since April 2010 in the village of Areyskoye, Krasnoyarsk Region, which is 4,200 km from Oryol where
his mother and partner live.
His transfer was ordered by the Oryol penal authorities because of overcrowding in the
post-conviction detention facilities in the region.
Mr Voynov’s repeated requests to the authorities to be transferred to a prison closer to Oryol to
maintain family ties while serving his sentence have all been rejected.
He also brought civil proceedings claiming compensation for the decision to transfer him, but his
claim was dismissed in 2012. The courts, not addressing his argument concerning the difficulties in
maintaining family ties at such a distance, held that the penal authorities’ decision had been lawful
because there had been overcrowding in the Oryol prisons.
His partner visited him six times between 2011 and 2013, but she has no longer been able to visit
him since the birth of their daughter in 2014. He has never seen his daughter.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life)
The case is a follow-up to the lead judgment in Polyakova and Others v. Russia of 2017, in which the
Court found a breach of Article 8 because the Russian legal system did not provide sufficient
safeguards against abuse as concerned decisions on the location of prisoners’ incarceration.
There was nothing in the Government’s submissions in the present case to convince the Court to
depart from the findings in that judgment.
Moreover, a recent ruling by the Constitutional Court of Russia showed that the national authorities’
approach to the interpretation of domestic law on the matter had not evolved. In that ruling an
application lodged by a convicted prisoner alleging that certain legal provisions (Articles 73 § 4 and
81 § 2) of the Code of Execution of Criminal sentences violated the rights of prisoners and their
families was dismissed. The Constitutional Court found that those provisions were not arbitrary and
corresponded to international legal norms under which prisoners should, where possible, serve their
sentence near their home, but that those norms were only a recommendation and were subject to
economic and social realities.
There had therefore been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention.
Article 13 (right to an effective remedy)
The Government suggested that Chapter 25 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which set out a
procedure for challenging State agencies’ acts and omissions, was an effective remedy for
Mr Voynov’s complaint. It therefore argued that the application should be declared inadmissible for
non-exhaustion of domestic remedies.
However, for a remedy to be effective, it must be clearly set out and confirmed by practice or caselaw
and the Government had not provided any details or concrete examples of judicial practice for
their suggested remedy.
Moreover, in other cases, including Polyakova and Others, brought before the Court, it had each
time refused to accept a complaint under Chapter 25 of the CCP as an effective domestic remedy.
The Court was not therefore satisfied that such proceedings, had they been instituted by Mr Voynov,
would have provided an avenue for him to adequately vindicate his right to respect for family life.
Furthermore, the proceedings claiming compensation had not provided an effective remedy for
Mr Voynov either. In those proceedings the domestic courts had not addressed his argument
regarding the difficulties in maintaining contact with his family while imprisoned so far away from
them.
Therefore, dismissing the Government’s argument as to non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, the
Court found that Mr Voynov had not had at his disposal an effective remedy for his complaints
under Article 8, in breach of Article 13.
Article 41 (just satisfaction)
The Court held that Russia was to pay Mr Voynov 6,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary
damage and EUR 850 in respect of costs and expenses.
Separate opinion
Judge Elósegui expressed a concurring opinion which is annexed to the judgment(echrcaselaw.com editing).
