Information Note on the Court’s case-law 241

June 2020

N.T. v. Russia - 14727/11

Judgment 2.6.2020 [Section III]

Article 3

Degrading treatment

Inhuman treatment

Life prisoners automatically placed, for the first ten years of their sentence, under a strict regime involving segregation, limited outdoor exercise and a lack of purposeful activity: violation

Facts – Under Russian law, all persons sentenced to life imp risonment have to spend the first ten years of their sentence under a strict regime. Under this regime, the applicant, a life prisoner, was detained separately from other convicts in cells holding no more than two people. Several years of his sentence were spent in solitary confinement. Locked up in his cell without any purposeful activity, such as work or education, he was allowed to leave it only for 90 minutes of outdoor exercise. His contact with the outside world and ability to spend money were signifi cantly restricted. In addition, during the first five years of his imprisonment, the prison guards routinely handcuffed the applicant, even when he had to empty his heavy thirty-litre lavatory bucket into a cesspool outside the building. This caused him ph ysical pain.

Law – Article 3 (substantive aspect)

(a) Strict regime of imprisonment – Confinement in a double cell might have negative effects similar to those of solitary confinement. Only particular security reasons, which had obtained throughout detent ion, might justify prolonged isolation. By the same logic, adequate justification was required for the prolonged detention of prisoners in double cells if the intensity and duration of their segregation were so significant that the effect was comparable to solitary detention, particularly regarding their well-being and social skills.  The Government had not provided any justification for the applicant’s solitary confinement. The applicant had been segregated for years solely on the ground of his life senten ce, which, in the Court’s view, was not sufficient to warrant such a measure. That situation had run counter to the Recommendation Rec(2003)23 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and the European Prison Rules. The first instrument highli ghted the importance of the principle of non‑segregation and the second explicitly required that the security measures applied to prisoners be the minimum necessary to ensure their custody and that they be reviewed at regular intervals throughout a person’ s imprisonment.

Taken cumulatively, the applicant’s isolation, limited outdoor exercise and lack of activity had resulted in intense and prolonged feelings of loneliness and boredom, causing him significant distress. Moreover, due to the lack of appropriat e mental and physical stimulation, that situation could have resulted in the loss of social skills and individual personal traits.

(b) Routine handcuffing – While the applicant had been registered on the list of dangerous prisoners, during the entire peri od of his detention in a highly secure facility he had never breached prison discipline. His systemic handcuffing for more than five years had therefore palpably exceeded the legitimate requirements of prison security. It had diminished his human dignity a nd caused him feelings of inferiority, anguish and accumulated distress going far beyond the unavoidable suffering and humiliation inherent in a sentence of life imprisonment.

Conclusion : violation (unanimously).

Article 46: The violation found stemmed in large part from the relevant provisions of domestic law and therefore disclosed a systemic problem. A further reform of the existing regulatory framework was required. The choice of instruments remained fully at the discretio n of the respondent Government, which might decide to remove the automatic application of a strict regime to all life prisoners, put in place provisions envisaging that such a regime could only be imposed – and maintained – on the basis of an individual r isk assessment of each life prisoner and be applied for no longer than strictly necessary and (or) mitigate the modalities of the regime, particularly those concerning physical restrictions, isolation and access to various activities for the purpose of soc ialisation and rehabilitation.

Article 41: EUR 3,000 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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