The authorities should take concrete measures to improve conditions in penitentiaries in accordance with the international standards and to ensure the efficient implementation of the compensatory mechanism, recommended experts of Promo-LEX Association, who on June 30 presented a public policy document on the implementation of the compensatory mechanism for detention in precarious conditions in the Republic of Moldova – from (in)efficiency to suspension, IPN reports.
According to the document’s authors, the repetitive character of the applications filed to the ECHR against Moldova, where the same problems related to the detention conditions were described, made the Court to ascertain the fact that the precarious detention conditions in Moldova are a systemic problem. Among the problems are crowdedness in jails, lack of hygiene and appropriate conditions, insufficient food and food of a poor quality and lack of appropriate medical care.
By amendments made to the Penal Procedure Code, there was introduced a mechanism for reducing punishment together with the pronouncing of the sentence if the person was held in precarious detention conditions.
By March 27, 2021, 10,874 applications concerning allegedly inappropriate detention conditions were submitted. Over 80% of the prisoners asked for the application of the compensatory mechanism to have their jail term reduced or to be compensated.
The authors of the document encourage the authorities to take concrete measures to improve the conditions in jails and to introduce detention concessions in accordance with the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
According to Promo-LEX lawyer Victoria Donica (Gamurari), the state is obliged not to subject the convicts to precarious detention conditions and to ensure normal isolation standards for them. The most favorable action on the part of the state is to solve the problem by improving detention conditions in prisons, while the compensatory mechanism comes to cover the damage caused by violating Article 3 of the Convention.
