Hospital's garden, we consider that it is necessary to urgently provide for one more, larger
walking yard.
d) Pula County Prison
During the visit to Pula County Prison we inspected the facilities where persons deprived of
their liberty stay or may stay, examined the documentation and interviewed prisoners and
employees. During the visit it was established that the County Prison's occupancy rate is
138%, which generates violations of the right of persons deprived of their liberty to
accommodation guaranteeing human dignity and health standards, and causes numerous
organisational difficulties. A large number of prisoners on remand complained about their
visits lasting only fifteen minutes. Although the duration of visits prescribed in the Ordinance
on house rules in prisons for remand prisoners is at least fifteen minutes, during the visit a
verbal recommendation was made to the head of the prison to allow longer or extraordinary
visits, particularly in cases when family members are coming from more distant locations.
During the visit we met only one female prisoner, who is also the only woman deprived of
liberty in the County Prison. As she is the only woman in the prison, her serving of the prison
sentence, in periods when there are no other women in the County Prison, has the
characteristics of solitary confinement. Therefore it was required to adjust her individual
programme for the execution of prison sentence (for example, provide working engagements,
intensify individual treatment sessions, etc.), of which the head of the prison was immediately
warned.
Even though the conduct of health care workers was generally assessed as correct and
professional within the given framework and available options, during the visit a large
number of complaints were received concerning the access to health care and long waiting
periods. Furthermore, it was established that Suboxone therapy is still administered by
judicial police officers, albeit being previously prepared by a nurse. Our position is that the
administration of medical therapy by judicial police officers is unacceptable, so we repeated
the verbal warning about the necessity to organise the work schedule in a way so that medical
therapy may be administered by medical nurses or medical technicians.
Finally, we identified a lack of working positions for prisoners and a lack of leisure activities,
which significantly restricts the possibility of organised spending of free time.
e) Lepoglava State Prison
Lepoglava State Prison is the largest high security penitentiary in the Republic of Croatia,
with the total of 735 prisoners. During the visit it was established that the occupancy rate of
the State Prison's high-security wards stands at 148% and that, despite turning living rooms
into dormitories, overcrowding is still a burning issue. The negative effects of overcrowding
are reflected in all segments of serving a prison sentence, but are most visible in numerous
violations of the right to accommodation guaranteeing human dignity and health standards.
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