Living space per prisoner in prison establishments 83. In December 2015, the CPT published a document13 on its standards regarding the minimum living space that a prisoner should be afforded in a cell. While these standards have been frequently used by the CPT since the 1990s in a large number of visit reports, they had so far not been brought together in a single document. In recent years, interest in these standards has increasingly been expressed, both at the national level (among prison authorities, national detention monitoring bodies such as national preventive mechanisms established under the OPCAT, domestic courts, NGOs, etc.) and at the international level, not least because of the widespread problem of prison overcrowding and its consequences. 84. The CPT’s minimum standards for personal living space in prison establishments are as follows: ►► 6m² of living space for a singleoccupancy cell; ►► 4m² of living space per prisoner in a multiple-occupancy cell. 13. “Living space per prisoner in prison establishments: CPT standards” (CPT/Inf (2015) 44), published on 15 December 2015. These minimum standards of living space should exclude the sanitary facilities within a cell. Consequently, a single-occupancy cell should measure 6m² plus the space required for a sanitary annexe (usually 1m² to 2m²). Equally, the space taken up by the sanitary annexe should be excluded from the calculation of 4m² per person in multiple-occupancy cells. Further, in any cell accommodating more than one prisoner, the sanitary annexe should be fully partitioned. Additionally, the CPT considers that any cell used for prisoner accommodation should measure at least 2m between the walls of the cell and 2.5m between the floor and the ceiling. 85. The 4m² per prisoner standard may still lead to cramped conditions when it comes to cells for a low number of inmates. Indeed, given that 6m² is the minimum amount of living space to be afforded to a prisoner accommodated in a single-occupancy cell, it is not selfevident that a cell of 8m² will provide satisfactory living space for two prisoners. In the CPT’s view, it is appropriate at least to strive for more living space than this. Thus, the CPT has decided ► Page 43