Prisoner Rights are Still Far from the State’s Priorities By Stanimir PETROV The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) started investigating the state of human rights in confinement facilities soon after it was established. Since the beginning of 1997, the organisation’s experts have had access to prisons, and two years later, they were admitted to pre-trial (primary) detention facilities (PDFs), too. In 1998, BHC published a booklet entitled “Your Rights in Confinement Facilities” which was distributed to all prisons. In 2003, the booklet was re-printed. During these years, BHC published as many as 5 specialised books on Bulgarian prisons, and 2 on PDFs. Unfortunately, the negative findings publicised in them in recent years still apply today. In all these years, the efforts of the Ministry of Justice and the General Directorate “Execution of Sentences” have not lead to any tangible improvement of the overall physical conditions. In 2002, with the amendment of the Law on Execution of Penalties, a possibility opened for the increase of the number of imprisoned persons in open and transitional-type boarding facilities. In the end, however, this did not lead to relief of overcrowding in most of the buildings of recidivist prisons and closed-type boarding facilities. All efforts for change in the legal confinement system in Bulgaria were also motivated by external factors such as the ratification of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as the four visits to Bulgarian prisons or PDFs visited by delegations of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture with the Council of Europe. After each visit, a list of recommendations was addressed to the responsible government institutions, most of which continued their existence on paper only. The second external factor in Bulgaria’s pre-accession work, too, did not
stimulate any change in the Bulgarian confinement system. This is how the Justice and Home Affairs chapter ended up closed without any structural changes in the system of legal confinement facilities. Strange as it may seem, the third external factor, namely guilty verdicts regarding conditions in Bulgarian prisons and detention facilities identified by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, did not appear a sufficient stimulus for reform of the confinement facilities system. From 2002 on, the few serious strikes and protests by imprisoned persons against poor living conditions have forced the government to realise that most of the prison buildings are only good as museums, and that prisoners have a right to serve their sentence in better conditions. For a short while public attention was focused on the piles of unsolved issues with prisons left by one government to the next. In the end, it became perfectly clear that prisons are not a number one priority for the judicial system, and this is why protests did not bring about any adequate governmental response. The overwhelming amount of outstanding problems has again led the government the easier way, i.e. by way of restrictions in a system that has the capacity to enforce restrictions. The road to reform of a closed system is difficult and costly but it has to be walked, for the simple reason that the conditions in the Bulgarian confinement facilities need to come into line with EU standards. After more than 10 years during which both internal and external factors only caused piecemeal change and not a quality system change, politicians should be clear that negative public attitude to investment in Bulgaria’s confinement system should not be allowed to hinder the initiation of the reform of Bulgarian PDFs and prisons.
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