Europe Explained

  Transcription

Welcome to this new episode of Europe Explained, the Council of Europe's podcast that highlights the work of the Council on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

In today's episode, we're going to go behind the scenes of the CPT, which is the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

We've done a few other episodes on the committee, so you can go and listen to them if you want to go further and understand their work better.

To talk about this topic we have 2 specialists. Hans Wolff, hello.

Hello.

You are a medical doctor, professor at the University of Geneva, and in charge of the Prison Health Service at University Hospitals of Geneva, and you've been a member of the CPT for a long time. 12 years, I believe.

Exactly.

And Julien Attuil Kayser, hello.

Hello.

You are Head of Division at the Secretariat of the CPT.

Before we go into detail, Hans, could you please explain what the role of the CPT is and your work?

So the CPT is the oldest inspection mechanism at the European level and we work on the basis of 2 principles.

One is cooperation and one is confidentiality. Cooperation means it's not shame and blame. It is an ongoing process prepared generally by the Secretariat.

And then we do visits regularly, periodic visits every 5 years, approximately. And then also, if needed, ad hoc visits focused on one topic.

And the confidentiality means that the country is in charge to bring our report to the public and also their reply.

And we are now happy to say that almost all reports are published and there is important pressure also on the country to be open, to be transparent and show our assessment and their replies.

We have even now 18 countries who have automatic publication procedure. So this is also ongoing in a good direction.

The powers of the CPT are to go at any place of detention, prison, police, immigration detention, psychiatry and also social care homes.

And to have access to all the documents, to speak in private with all persons and also to check documentations, medical files, CCTV footages.

To have access also to administrative and judicial files. And all this together brings us the possibility to assess the situation with regards to ill treatment, with quality of detention in general.

But it's always focused on Article 3, the Interdiction of Degrading and Inhumane Treatment.

So you have a lot of places to visit. How do you decide, Julien, which prison or which police station to go to first? How do you organise these visits?

Yeah, indeed it's quite complicated to identify from Strasbourg which establishment is problematic or not.

There are a limited number of countries where we can visit all the places of deprivation of liberty, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino.

But in the vast majority of the Council of Europe countries, we have to make a selection, and so we make this selection based on a number of criteria.

First of all, establishments where we have been. Were there problems? Do we need to follow up on those problems? So then we'll go back definitely.

And then for the establishments we don't know, we need to assess which one we need to pick depending on the topic and specific category of person detained there.

And we like to focus on this category, I don't know, a section on minors, children, elderly persons, or special treatment, for example, in psychiatric care. So this will be another reason to visit an establishment.

And then we receive a lot of information. People write to us.

Members of staff? Who writes?

We get some staff, but it's rare. It would be mostly a person deprived of their liberty and mostly persons in prisons.

We will receive far less letters or contact emails from people in psychiatric care or in social care homes for a number of reasons.

So we receive that information. Sometimes also the family or a lawyer is going to write to us.

The issue is that we can't intervene on an individual basis. So we can't go and check just the situation of this person that wrote to us. We need to see the big picture of the establishment. So those elements are important. NGOs also.

And again, there are a lot of NGOs active, especially regarding prisons, a few on police, but far less on psychiatric care and social care.

So more it's more difficult to get information. And then there are also at national level now a number of mechanisms that are doing the same work as the CPT.

They are called NPM, National Preventive Mechanism. And so they are also a very good source of information. What they have seen, what they haven't seen, where there is a challenge.

So we put all those elements together and we decide where to go. In a visit of 2 weeks we will visit 4 or 5 prisons.

So intense.

Yeah. And 10 politicians, including in the evening or at night or at weekends, because psychiatric hospitals will not function the same way on Tuesday afternoon then on Sunday. There will be less staff, less activities.

You need to get a global picture.

Yeah. And sometimes during their period where there is less staff, there is more risk of ill treatment, people being restrained during weekends in psychiatric establishments because there's no staff: “What shall we do? We can't take care of those, so we restrain them."

So it's important that we go and see this reality as well.

And so Hans, you mentioned that you visit every 5 years a prison, for example.

No, it isn't.

It's more a country.

Every 5 years depends on the countries. There are small countries where we go every 7 years. If we don't have allegations or ill treatment information, then we have to prioritise others.

And we do this work very regularly and that's really the strength also of the Secretariat, which is a big and very professional group, who follow up very closely on this information.

And so for bigger countries, it’s, let's say, even 4-5 years for periodic, and smaller countries can be even 7 or 8 years we have this.

So it isn’t a fixed rule. But are establishments informed of your visit? Or you mentioned you come sometimes by night. Is it to get a global picture?

Exactly. When we come to a country, generally 2 weeks prior to the visit, let's say if it's a periodic visit, we publish it 1 year in advance.

We give a list of 8 countries which will be visited next year, and then 2 weeks prior, the government of the country will receive a notification.

We request also credentials which allow us to go to all places of detention. That's important because we might, depending on what happens in the country, change our plans.

For example, we were recently in Georgia visiting prisons and there were major political movements, also riots, arrests, violence, allegations of violence, and we changed our plans to follow up on this.

So all places could be visited at any time. All the places are informed, and this is working.

Even in the very far east of the country, let's say Turkey, almost at the Iranian border, if we go there at 11 at night they let us in, because they know that we come and they know our credentials generally.

It is extremely seldom that we have to build up pressure. For example, we could do this with the liaison officer of the government, but this is hardly ever needed.

So to add, the countries are aware we're coming, and when we notify, we tell them to inform all the places of deprivation of liberty in their country that we might come.

But there are thousands in most of the countries, so they don't know if we will visit this place or that place.

And then usually a week in advance, we tell a part of the programme, usually a big establishment, big prison, big psychiatric establishment, where we'd like to have information prior to the visit, because they get something specific that we're interested in.

But most of the establishments we visit are not aware that we're coming. Or sometimes we might tell them the day before.

We might give a phone call to the liaison officer, usually the Minister of Justice, that is liaising between us and the places of deprivation of liberty and different ministries.

We say: look, we're going to this establishment tomorrow. Can you tell them that they can prepare in a way that the director will be there, that we need documentation, so they can prepare the documentation.

But the vast majority of establishments we visit are not notified. So basically we ring at the bell.

I remember visiting a police establishment on a Saturday evening, quite late, and we were ringing at the bell and the police officer was saying: “We're closed."

We said: we know you're closed, but we know that you’re detaining a person there so please open the door.

A bit of negotiation, and then when the police officer came to open the door he had his hand on his gun because he didn't know who we were.

We explained that we were CPT but he didn't get the notification. And so we explained, we showed our credentials, which was very important, and then he made one phone call and we were given access to the establishment.

And Julien, you can both answer this, but how do people react? Do you get good reactions because people know you just want to help?

Or sometimes is it a bit more complicated because of the surprise, the bad surprise sometimes if they're not ready?

In general, when we come, this means they have more work. So I think no one is really happy that we come.

Maybe because you are a doctor, Hans, is that a bit more intimidating because you know exactly what you're looking for on records?

I'm speaking now, for example, at police stations, and there no one knows that I'm a doctor. So we are a delegation. We are visiting them. We will make an assessment and report to the minister, which is quite frightening for many, so they are not very secure, what shall they say, and so on.

And the important thing is at the outset to establish a relationship, to explain our work, to explain what we look at.

It happens also that people who are in charge of different places of deprivation of liberty are quite happy to talk to us because they try to improve generally the system.

They have problems, they have material conditions which are not suitable for the work of the professionals, but also for the prisoners or the detainees. And they are quite happy that we come, because then things change frequently.

So generally in the beginning it's a bit reserved, but frequently at the end we have very constructive discussions.

At the end, we always give feedback to the person in charge and in a way also to check if our assessment is correct, or if there are some errors which need to be addressed or immediately corrected. And we always put a lot of energy into it to be very solid on our findings.

That's also the reason, for example, why we always have a doctor in the delegation, because we always check the medical files, which are generally the only source of injuries or potential ill treatment, and so somehow a proof that something happened.

We'll talk about the visits more specifically. But you mentioned there's a doctor in the team. Julien, who is in this CPT team? How many members come and do these visits?

So a team, a delegation that will visit a country, will be composed usually of up to 10 people plus interpreters.

Because we also work with interpreters that we recruit ourself that are working for us, and they are a very important source of trust for us and for the inmates, because it is the way we make a link, and we manage to talk and exchange and get the confidence, and to get the information we want.

So interpreters are really important, but apart from the interpreters, the delegation will be composed of… it’s a multidisciplinary approach.

So we get doctors in each group. There will always be a doctor because there will always be a need to check medical records.

And then depending on the topic, on the issue that we want to cover, we will adapt the composition of the team according to need.

So if we go more for prisons, then we'll take members of the committee that are more specialist in prisons.

We'll take maybe a lawyer. We'll take a judge or a certain person that is doing this job at national level, National Preventive Mechanism.

We get a number of members of the committee that have this competence.

Or if we go to psychiatry, then we'll have more specialists, psychiatrists, psychologists.

And then we try also to make a blend between people that have been in the country before and new people to have a bit of expertise and knowledge, but also a new approach, new vision.

We'll also try to see if there are people that speak the language, because then there's no language barrier, and then usually you get more information if you speak the language.

Or sometimes we know that there is a big proportion, especially in prison, of foreign nationals or foreigners of this category that are in this prison.

We might come with the national member that will speak this language, and we'll go there and talk to those persons, and we'll collect a lot of information.

So all those elements together. And the idea is to have also a collective work. So the doctor will bring something, the prison director will bring something, the lawyer will bring something. It's really a collective work.

Also, when we find information, if I find something, an allegation of ill treatment, someone will tell me: "I've been beaten up. It happened there.”

If I find it credible, then most probably what I will do first thing is go to talk to the doctor and say: look, I got this information. It happened on this date, can you check if there is a medical record?

And then we might also go to the CCTV recordings and check with our techniques. Not to say we want to see this just to protect the person, but to see a number of recordings and see if this indeed happened.

Or we can also check records of use of force, for example, that exist especially in prison, or use of restraints, means of restraints that exist in psychiatric hospitals.

So we cross-check that each of the persons that are part of the team got the specific expertise that can be used at the end of the visit.

And when we draft the report, to have this multidisciplinary approach and make sure that we didn't miss something, that we are coherent and that we are right.

And what would be the first step? How do you carry these visits out? Do you first talk with the members of staff, or do you want to first talk with inmates if you're in a prison, for example, Hans?

It depends. So if we have a very concrete allegation of ill treatment in a spot, it happens that, for example, we split apart. We'll start with the director, generally, to gather information to understand the prison, the management, the organisation.

And, for example, the doctor and a lawyer or someone else, together with interpreters, will go directly to the place where we have the allegation and start interviewing.

The entire group starts interviews in, for example, disciplinary cells. Generally when we come to a prison, the entire delegation starts with the direction. This means the director, then the chief of staff, the chief of security, the chief of probation.

We will have these talks. We will request the registries for discipline, use of force, CCTV recordings, injuries and also death. And that occurred in the last year.

We also want the staffing situation, who is present at every shift, for example.

But generally in the beginning, the hotspots are always the disciplinary or isolation unit. That's generally where we have to go.

We generally interview all the people there, look very closely to see the material conditions, the yards, to see the sanitary facilities. This is sometimes really degrading in these units.

Then there are other units, special units, for example, for lifers. This is also a vulnerable group.

It can happen that juveniles are in a prison, it can happen that different other groups, psychiatric illness, disabilities, we look at all this. I think that's really important.

And so what exactly do you check if you have an allegation of ill treatment? Would you check the records to see if there’s been some bruising or injuries? Is that how you do it?

Yeah. So as Julien said, this is teamwork. Generally if a member comes along with an allegation, then the doctor is the first one. CCTV.

Then the administrative files. Are there notes? What is written? What are the allegations? And we bring this all together and then decide if this is credible, or whether we have enough ground to mention this in the report.

The other thing is then the fear of reprisals. We have countries where the people don't dare to speak to us.

This is generally in countries where there is a prisoner hierarchy. This is the former Soviet Union states. There is a very strong prisoner hierarchy.

And in these countries we frequently have difficulties to get the information, because the people are so much in fear because they fear reprisals after having spoken to us.

And we make it very clear to the director, to the management, that if we get any information about this, this will be seen as a severe breach of cooperation which will go to the government. And this in a way protects against it.

But we are never 100% sure, especially if it comes from the informal prison hierarchy, because we don't have any grip on this.

Julien, you wanted to say something?

Yeah. On the ill treatment, it's really complicated for us to decide, because we want to put in the report what is the reality. We want to be clear, we want to be precise.

But on the other hand, we are not prosecutors. We're not the ones doing the investigation.

So we collect a number of pieces of information to make sure that for us it's credible, but then it's up to the national authorities.

Then we put in the report they need to do inquiries. They need to do possibly administrative investigations if there is an allegation that violence is done by custodial staff, for example.

But you need also to go to the prosecutor and transmit all that information. And we ask the authorities to keep us informed on the situation of this specific country, specific establishment, specific person. So we follow up on that.

But that's our limit. We need to find allegations and we only talk about allegations. Then what we put in the report, it's always credible for us, but then it's up to the authorities to do the real work of the investigation.

And I think this credibility is so crucial in this regard, because I think all the image and credibility of the CPT is referred to this.

We put a lot of effort and energy into it, to only refer to credible information, and where we have from different sides support of this thesis.

And for the time being, I think the countries know that if we say something this is highly probable, it's extremely credible.

We don't punish, we don't have the power to punish a country or to do the investigations. But we can make recommendations. And this is generally very much followed up and also assessed in terms of cooperation.

And so once you've done these visits, you've seen all these records if the staff has helped you get access to them, and then you fly back home.

How can you make a difference? Is it by making recommendations? What's your immediate impact? If you have examples.

Yeah, definitely. First of all, we sometimes get impact immediately on the spot, meaning that we talk with someone and someone will tell us.

A recent visit that I've done, we opened a cell and there were 3 people, but only 2 beds and 2 mattresses, so 1 person was without a mattress.

So we looked at the custodial staff and said: what's going on there?

They said: "Oh, yeah. I didn't know."

And then within 10 minutes, a mattress appeared.

Or someone telling us they didn't have access to a shower for the last 2 weeks and then suddenly, the next day, they all have access to a shower.

So those are small victories, but we know they're limited.

Sometimes on more serious cases we will go and talk to the director immediately and say: look, what's the situation of this person? Do you know about him or her?

And then we talk specifically on possibilities of different treatment, different placements in an establishment because there is a problem.

So we also sometimes, just by putting a question, improve the lives of those people.

Then when we go and talk to the ministers, because that's the specificity of the CPT is that we go on the spot but we go also at the end.

We meet with ministers, Ministers of Justice, Ministers of Interior Affairs, Ministers of Health, and then we give them a bit of feedback of what we saw.

Sometimes they are surprised because when they visit an establishment, then usually it's all cleaned up, and they only talk to the one that was selected.

So of course it's a different reality than what we saw. So we give them this feedback.

And are they happy to have it sometimes?

Sometimes. It's a mixed feeling. And sometimes you never know when you get an impact. You were asking if sometimes when we make recommendations, immediately things need to be changed because we find violence.

I remember a country that we visited. We talked to the minister, we made a report saying there is ill treatment in this specific section. It was a section for children, mostly Roma. We received a lot of allegations of ill treatment.

And then 2 or 3 years afterwards, we came back to the country and basically we came back to the establishment just to check what was changed.

And we realised the staff is still the same. Okay. That's not good, usually.

And then we start to interview the children, who were quite afraid. But we took the time, we had someone speaking the language, and then we end up with the same conclusion, that the ill treatment by staff was still going on with clear allegations.

They were wearing gloves. They go in the room where there's no CCTV. So a clear pattern of ill treatment. We even got names of the staff.

And there, for example, at the end of this visit, we didn't go to see the director, we left. We just shook hands. But we didn't say that we didn’t have time to give a debriefing, because we needed to talk to each other and to assess what we found or not.

And then at the end of the visit we were due to see the minister. The minister initially said: "I don't have time, maybe 20 minutes maximum."

She stayed with us more than an hour collectively. And then the head of the delegation spoke privately to her, and she said: "I'm going to change it."

And we sent a letter and then indeed they changed it.

Then they changed the management, because usually when there is a pattern of ill treatment, quite often it's known, or the management will let it go, at least. And so there is a need to change the mentality.

Then there was also prosecutors who came to interview the children, and then criminal proceedings were opened against some staff.

So that’s a very quick impact that you can have, even when you are still on the ground, I expect.

Hans, what would be the more long-term impacts you can have with all those recommendations you mentioned?

I think we have a lot of success stories with the CPT. I must say, the most powerful success story is that the court relies on us. So the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg included at least 2,000 judgements based on CPT findings.

Therefore our recommendations, which are just recommendations for the states, all of a sudden become mandatory for the states.

And I think this makes really a change in the long run, and not only for the country, but for the whole Council of Europe region.

If we come to success stories, recently I was in Moldova. For example, self-harm was punished, and we repeatedly said this cannot be managed by a punitive approach. It must be managed by a therapeutic approach.

And this time we came back and they changed the regulations and it's now not punished anymore. It is managed on a therapeutic approach.

Maybe you have other examples, Julien.

Yeah, quite a few. There is also in terms of in between the report and the discussion we got with the ministers, there is what we call immediate observations that we can do.

So basically before even the report is adopted, we send a letter to the authorities to basically wrap up what we've told them and what our main conclusions are.

And in this document, we sometimes do what we call immediate observations and we ask the authorities to take concrete actions reported within 3 weeks.

Quite often it's closing down of certain cells that are inhumane, degrading, because they are too small, because their material conditions are unacceptable.

Sometimes we would like to do it for a full establishment, because there are certain establishments we visit where every cell is inhuman and degrading by themselves.

But we can't do that because we know the government will not be able to close down the establishment within 3 months and report on it. So we're very careful sometimes.

We also mention specific situations of people that need to be transferred or specific improvements that can be done very quickly.

Or we can also ask the authorities to give us a timeline: we know you can't refurbish the showers there within 3 months, but you can give us the timeline that you've planned, confirm that the money was allocated, and report to us on a regular basis to tell us that those showers were refurbished.

So this is also very important.

And then in terms of impact in the long run, quite often we end up having an impact on legislation. What Hans mentioned in Moldova was also a change in the legislation.

I remember in Italy, they changed their legislation using CPT wording in terms of the material conditions, what they should have.

We insist, for example, to have yards with a shelter against rain and the sun, and they use that jargon.

So it's really approved that in the legislation on material conditions in Italy that the impact was there, and that we have this dialogue with the authorities and they do implement it.

Another example is, we set up and make very specific and clear that the space for each person in a multi-occupancy cell must be at least 4m².

And this is something which now everyone knows, and this came from the CPT.

And there are a lot of other success stories where we don't know exactly. Is it the CPT? Is it the NPM? Is it maybe a politician who very much takes it really to his heart and has the energy to change it?

Countries in the Balkans wanted to be member of the EU. What we did is then go and assess, and the membership for the EU, one of the criteria was to be compliant with human rights criteria. CPT reports play a very important role in this, and also the judgements of the court.

But sometimes we go to these countries together with the Council of Europe Development Bank. So also the financial pressure, or let's say motivation, is used to improve human rights standards.

One really important thing, let's say if I give 3 examples of good countries. For example, Spain, they have 8 hours out of cell time for almost every prisoner. They have, for example, the system of listeners.

8 hours?

Out of cell time.

A week?

No, per day.

Per day?

Per day. So that’s a major part of the day they are outside and can associate with other people, which is what we want.

When the reality is in most of the countries and prisons, it would be 1 hour outside of cell.

Yeah, that’s why I asked if it was 8 hours a week.

Exactly.

Unfortunately, what we find is now we're going to the yard and that's it. No other activities. So that's why this is what we ask. But we don't find it all the time.

And it's good to see that countries can do it. Another country is, for example, the Netherlands.

They had this system about food, which they gave food boxes of prepared meals, and they could heat it up in a microwave, which was in every cell.

And 80-90% of this food was thrown away because people didn't like it. So they managed to have models inside prison.

They set in place a kitchen and had a prison officer who was skilful to help them to cook together and this created work, this created community, this created out of cell time.

Various examples. But my favourite example is Norway. Norway had a very difficult situation in prison at the beginning of the 90s, a lot of violence, a high recidivism rate after release. They had about 70% 5 years after release.

And then the government took an all-government approach with white books, with projects, with plans, and they identified the training of prison officers as crucial, as central in their plan.

And so they totally changed the training and the competence building of the prison officers, who today have really very high competence in terms of communication, in terms of social skills.

They have a mentorship system where they see what is going on with the prisoner each week.

They meet generally 1 hour with each prisoner to see how the relationships with the other prisoners are, how it goes after release, how it goes with the family, and so on.

And also they improved the material conditions of prisons. They have these model prisons like Halden or Bastøy.

And all this together makes the regime and the quality of imprisonment to be at a level where you would say the people that are released from prison generally have a workplace, they have better training, they are prepared to go back to society.

And this rehabilitation process is really put in place in a very impressive way.

So I think it's safe to say that the CPT is quite a unique example of monitoring. So do all these positive examples that you've just mentioned make you quite positive about the future?

Well, it is positive because when we started 35 years ago, conditions of deprivation of liberty and regimes in prison, in psychiatry, in immigration detention facilities, were far worse than they are now.

So in terms of material conditions, for sure, it improved. The 4m², even if there is still a lot of overpopulation, it's better than some years ago.

Again, access to showers, access to toilets, access to TV, access to telephones. Now this is normal, when before it was not the case. So we see this improvement.

We also see an improvement if you look back 20, 30 years ago in terms of violence. I will talk about prison. Violence by staff or violence among people deprived of liberty was higher.

Now there are still some issues, there is still some work to be done, but we see something positive.

The difficulty is nowadays linked with economical crises, with difficulties to recruit staff, difficulties to train them, difficulties to have enough staff.

We see some rare occurrences, some backsliding, when it comes to ill treatment or violence, or it's more accepted.

If you see improvements, you have to continue working on these issues. It's never sure that it's going to stay that way.

It's never sure. I think this is one of the lessons learned. I think about 30 years ago we thought human rights, that is it. That was the victory of human rights. This will never be questioned.

We see today that important fundamental human rights are questioned by many countries. Even pushbacks are today more or less allowed by many countries and regulations.

I think we see overcrowding also, which is in some countries really going through the roof, in particular in France.

But I think the important thing is that you need to work on it, and this is the lesson learned. I think the work of independent monitoring is important, because the country itself is sometimes too busy with conflicts of interest.

And then if an outside body comes and puts the finger on places where it hurts, this is the only way to improve things.

Our possibility to reach the top level, the ministry level, the government level, is an important tool to improve this.

And this together with the court is really a fantastic tool which is not found anywhere else worldwide.

If I may, I'm thinking about what Hans said about Norway and the staffing.

This is something that is crucial, and what is the most important in a place of deprivation of liberty is the staff.

If the staff is well trained, if the staff is present, then there is far less violation of human rights and more respect to dignity. So staff is the crucial part.

We also engage in terms of recommending training for staff, recommending recruitment.

We're working internally within the Council of Europe with other colleagues that are doing cooperation projects to indeed help the staff to improve, to learn our standards, to better be aware of what they should do to have exchange of good practices between some countries and others.

This is also very important and very unique in terms of our role collectively at the Council of Europe.

It's not only the monitoring, but we're also bringing possibilities to improve with cooperation, with projects that will allow, concretely speaking, the implementation of our recommendations.

Well, good luck on all these improvements. And thank you for coming on the podcast.

Thank you.