Clasens v. Belgium


Information Note on the Court’s case-law 229
May 2019
Clasens v. Belgium - 26564/16
Judgment 28.5.2019 [Section IV]
Article 3
Degrading treatment
Lack of a minimum service to ensure that prisoners’ basic needs were met during a strike by prison wardens: violation
Article 13
Effective remedy
Structural shortcoming which rendered ineffective an order to ensure that prisoners’ basic needs were met during a strike in prisons: violation
Facts – In the spring of 2016 strike action by prison wardens affected prisons in Brussels and Wallonia. In the absence of a guaranteed minimum service in Belgian prisons, the ordinary prison regime was subsequently suspended to varying extents, depending on the prison concerned.
Throughout the entire duration of the strike – almost two months – the applicant had no access to activities outside his cell: he was confined to his cell for 24 hours a day, with the exception of a one-hour period every three days in the recreation yard, and was able to take a shower only twice a week, with no possibility of obtaining hygiene products, distribution of which had been discontinued.
From the beginning of the strike, several prisoners, including the applicant, had applied to the urgent-applications judge and obtained an order requiring the State to ensure a minimum service, in order to meet the basic needs of the persons detained within the prison, subject to penalties for non-compliance. In spite of the prison governor’s efforts and police intervention, it proved impossible to re-establish the lawful provision of basic services: there had been no substantial improvement in the conditions of detention. In 2017 the court of appeal reduced the amount of the penalties but upheld the finding against the State, on the grounds that there had been a breach of human dignity.
Law
Article 3 (substantive aspect): There had been consensus among the observers who visited the premises in terms of their description of the material conditions of detention in the prison concerned during the strike (see above). The court of appeal itself had used those reports to conclude that such a situation violated human dignity.
These material conditions of detention had been aggravated by the consequences of the lack of a framework for ensuring continuity in prison wardens’ tasks during strike periods: the prisoners had found themselves dependent on the refusal to work of large numbers of prison wardens and obliged to accept the unlawfulness and uncertainty of the minimum services provided, without knowing when the strike would end and thus with no prospects of seeing the situation improve. They had been deprived of almost all contact with the outside world, whether the use of the telephone, family visits or meetings with their lawyers.
There had been a crucial shortage in prison staff. None of the reports drawn up following visits to the prison during the strike indicated that the presence of police officers, essentially assigned to security and surveillance, had permitted a significant improvement in the prisoners’ daily lives.
The cumulative effect of a continued lack of physical exercise, repeated breaches of the hygiene regulations, the lack of contact with the outside world and the uncertainty about whether his basic needs would be met had necessarily caused the applicant distress of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention. Those conditions of detention constituted degrading treatment.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 13 taken together with Article 3:  The lack of a framework to ensure continuity in the tasks of prison wardens during strike periods had compromised execution of the favourable decision given by the ordinary courts in response to the applicant’s urgent application, given that the provision of minimum services to the prisoners had in any event been dependent on fluctuations in the strike action.
Having regard to this underlying structural shortcoming, the applicant had thus not had access to a remedy capable of affording redress for the situation of which he was a victim and preventing the continuation of the alleged violations.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 3,480 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
 
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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