REALITY OF THE PENITENTIARY SYSTEM - INSPECTION OF DETENTION FACILITIES
Legislative developments and challenges
Within 2015 there were significant developments towards addressing the urgent nature of important parameters of the country's
penitentiary system, which were the start for a more global approach to the penitentiary issue and the structural, systemic and
chronic problems it presents (see Annual Report 2014, pp. 156-159). The provisions of Law 4322/2015 "Reforms of penal
provisions, abolishment of type C detention facilities and other provisions" attempted to address in a direct way serious issues of
the penitentiary system, which has "legalised" a distorted perception and practice regarding the correct penal and correctional
treatment (e.g. the issue of the penal and correctional treatment of drug addicts, minors, patients, disabled people, etc.), issues
which the Ombudsman had repeatedly highlighted in its documents and Annual Reports of previous years (for example see
Annual Report 2013, pp. 136-137). The letter and the spirit of the new provision focus on the end goal, which has been
highlighted by the NPM: "less prisoners, less time of incarceration, particular attention to special cases, implementation of
alternative detention measures". After the implementation of the provisions at issue and in the context of a first assessment, the
prospects look promising, as presented in detail in the reply document with ref. no. 86847/26.11.2015 of the Secretary General
of Crime Policy to the Ombudsman. For example, there is reference to the decrease of the population of the criminal prisoners in
the detention facilities as well as the population of third-country nationals who are under judicial deportation, and to the cease of
the detention of criminal prisoners in police station cells. According to this document, up to 30 September 2015, 3459 people had
been released. However, until full implementation of the provisions at issue, and until the following overall evaluation of their
effectiveness, the NPM underlines that the overcrowding of the Greek prisons remains a critical issue for ensuring the hard core
of the fundamental rights, in particular with regard to the unsuitability of the largest part of the building infrastructures, the
insufficiency of medical care and the lack of specialised staff. This issue must be addressed not only with emergency measures
for the immediate decongestion of the detention facilities but also with the adoption of corrective - remedial mechanisms for the
beneficial calculation of the penalty.
An urgent priority, as the Ombudsman has stressed repeatedly, and is noted in the explanatory report of Law 4322/2015, is to
evaluate the penitentiary issue in the light of the overall operation of the penal system with its separate aspects, i.e.
legislative, judicial and correctional, in the framework of a mid-term penal and correctional policy, a priority which the
Administration seems to grasp in principle.
In any case, the separate regulations regarding the penitentiary system and the prison facilities included in the very recently
published Law 4356/2015, are evaluated as positive. Examples are:
• The sale of seized and confiscated products in detention facilities (Article 38), an issue which the Ombudsman had underlined
in the past.
• Separate regulations for the support of rural prisons (Article 41, see also below).
• The establishment of a legislative committee, which will process the existing draft of the penitentiary code (Article 40).
• The elimination of the obligation to pay an amount up to 10,000 euro to a charity institution as a term which may be ordered,
among others, for prisoners conditionally released (Article 12(6) of Law 4322/2015 and Article 100(3)(i) of the Criminal Code), an
issue which the NPM focused on, with regard to the usefulness of the measure in relation to the purpose of conditional release
(even when it is an emergency measure to decongest the facilities, as is the case here), but also in relation to the large number
of indigent prisoners.
• The mandatory suspension of the trial for 30 days during the mandatory appointment of an attorney by the court for the
purpose of the effective defence of the defendant (Article 33).
Rural Prisons for Adults
Within 2015, the NPM completed a round of visits to the Rural Prisons for Adults, in the context of a broader action started back
in 2014 (see Annual Report 2014, pp. 158), for the case of the Rural Prison of Kassandra, and related findings and proposals
submitted by the NPM), after visiting the Rural Prison of Agia, on 3 and 4 December and the Rural Prison of Tirintha, on 18
December.
Despite the particularities of each detention facility, and with the special note that in each one the number of prisoners was
lower than the respective capacity of each facility, the findings are common, that despite having large areas of land, they face
problems in their operation, staffing and logistics infrastructure.
Therefore, they appear to move away from an alternative sentence serving model, based on humanitarian criteria of
reintegration, while there is a risk that they will be used exclusively for the practical purpose of decongesting the other prisons,
by channelling prisoners to the rural prisons which serve as a place of transit prior to release.
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