The Committee of Ministers closed its examination of the execution of the European Court of Human Rights’ judgment in Kadusic v. Switzerland. The case concerned an “institutional therapeutic measure” imposed after the applicant’s initial prison sentence. This is a court-ordered measure involving detention and psychiatric treatment for a person convicted of an offence who has a mental disorder.
The European Court found that the measure was not sufficiently linked to the applicant’s original conviction, that the institution was unsuitable for his mental condition and that the psychiatric assessment was not recent enough.
The Swiss Federal Court has since clarified the rules for imposing such measures after conviction. Its case-law requires a sufficient link to the original conviction and sufficiently recent psychiatric assessments. Where a decision is revised to the detriment of a convicted person, genuinely new facts or evidence are required; grounds for imposing a later therapeutic measure alone are not sufficient.
The broader issue of detaining people with mental disorders in institutions unable to provide appropriate psychiatric care continues to be examined in the I.L. (No. 2) group.
