Poland must take legislative measures to stop the practice of detaining juveniles subject to correctional proceedings without a specific judicial decision
JUDGMENT
Grabowski v. Poland 30.06.2015 (no. 57722/12)
SUMMARY:
The applicant, Mr Grabowski, 17 years old at the time, complained that his placement in a shelter for juveniles had been extended for a period of five months without a specific court order, pending a decision in correctional proceedings against him.
The Court found in particular that this situation had resulted from the judicial practice which had developed under the Juvenile Act in Poland of keeping juveniles in a shelter once their case had been referred for correctional proceedings, without issuing a separate decision to extend their detention.
It considered that that practice had resulted from the lack of precision in the provisions of the Juvenile Act and therefore found that Mr Grabowski’s continued detention for five months after the expiry of the initial order to detain him had not been lawful. Furthermore, the judicial review of Mr Grabowski’s application for release had not been adequate, as it had not explained the legal basis for his continued detention in the shelter for juveniles, but simply referred to the fact that he had been accused of serious criminal acts.
In the Court’s view, the problems identified in Mr Grabowski’s case could subsequently give rise to other well-founded applications, there apparently being 340 juveniles placed in shelters in a similar situation to that of Mr Grabowski (statistics as of 2012). The Court therefore called for Poland to take legislative measures to stop this practice and to ensure that each and every deprivation of liberty of a juvenile is authorised by a specific judicial decision.
PROVISION:
Article 5 §§ 1 and 4
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Maksymilian Grabowski, is a Polish national who was born in 1995 and lives in Cracow (Poland).
Mr Grabowski, a minor at the time, was arrested on 7 May 2012 on suspicion of committing a number of armed robberies. He was initially detained in a police establishment for children and then, by way of a court order, was placed in a shelter for juveniles for a period of three months.
In July 2012 the Cracow-Krowodrze District Court ordered that his case be examined in correctional proceedings under the Juvenile Act.
Once such an order is issued, the family courts’ common practice in Poland is not to issue a separate decision extending the placement in a shelter for juveniles. The family courts consider that such an order constitutes of itself a basis for extending the placement of a juvenile in a shelter.
Thus, despite numerous requests for Mr Grabowski to be released on expiry of the three-month period (that is, on 7 August 2012), he remained in the shelter until the judgment in his case was delivered on 9 January 2013 in the correctional proceedings. Notably, in a decision of 9 August 2012, the Cracow-Krowodrze District Court dismissed Mr Grabowski’s application for release, excluding the possibility of any other alternative security measure on the ground that he had been accused of committing criminal acts with the use of a dangerous object.
In the judgment of 9 January 2013 the district court found that Mr Grabowski had committed the offences of which he stood accused and ordered his placement in a correctional facility, suspended for a two-year probationary period. That judgment was not appealed against and became final(echrcaselaw.com editing).
