Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and Women´s Group B.a.B.e. will monitor situation in prisons in the Republic of Croatia. The aim of the project is to improve the overall situation regarding the respect of fundamental rigths of prisoners, and the conditions in which they serve their sentences. The realization of the year-long project, funded by the Open Society Institute, will start in the coming period. (18-APR-07)
Text by HRH Zagreb/ Goran Milakovic
The project includes closer inquiry and survey into the problems of protection and implementation of human rights of prisoners; establishing cooperative relationships with prison authorities and the Department of the Penitentiary System of the Ministry of Justice; finding solutions to the human rights issues in cooperation with experts in penal law, psychology and others, as well as with the prison authorities and the Ministry; developing recommendations based on such insights, and monitoring implementation thereof. At the same time CHC and B.a.B.e. will conduct actions aiming to inform and sensitize the general public and the media.
Situation in Croatian prisons recently became critical, so even Ministry of Justice, as responsible state institution, alarmed media and general public about it. According to the data they provided there are more inmates than prison capacities. Moreover, the data indicate that the prisons and penitentiaries are understaffed.
In the previous couple of years the CHC has received a great number of complaints from inmates of various penitentiary institutions: prisons, prison hospitals, prisons for incapacitated persons, and correctional institutions for minor delinquents.
Analyzing the complaints, CHC and B.a.B.e. found out that there is a whole variety of problems, mostly caused by inadequate living conditions in such institutions (including the lack of the very basic conditions of personal hygiene, minimum of space, clean bedclothes, fresh air, daylight in cells, etc.); insufficient medical care; physical and mental abuses, as well as sexual abuses by other prisoners; insufficient protection by the prison staff; difficulties in obtaining legal advice; and generally in insufficient legal protection.
