Violence in closed institutions is dealt with internally Violence is generally not reported by victims or third parties. When violence is reported, and when there is an institutional response, it is often limited to disciplinary proceedings against the offender or to administrative proceedings, for example through a complaint to an external monitoring body or Ombudsperson. However, these mechanisms are not aimed at identifying and punishing the offender and fail to meet the obligations of Member States under the 2012 Directive, the ECHR and the Charter. States are required under European and International standards to put in place complaint mechanisms and monitoring bodies to control detention conditions. These mechanisms, which are a necessity, are however often regarded as self-sufficient, even in cases of violence. They operate in parallel to rights and procedures that would be available to all victims of crimes. As a result, Detention Administration, monitoring bodies and complaint mechanisms do not necessarily refer cases of violence or ill-treatment to Law Enforcement Authorities, even when there is a legal obligation to do so. The lack of communication between the complaint mechanisms and the police and prosecution authorities in relation to acts that may constitute criminal offences in detention has been highlighted in several Member States. In the Netherlands, referrals between the prison complaint mechanisms and the national prosecution services are rare. In Belgium, the monitoring bodies of prisons (Commissions de Surveillance) act as moderators between the Detention Administration (in pre-trial detention only) but are not entrusted to report cases to Law Enforcement Authorities. The same phenomenon was also identified with medical staff. The multiplication of internal or external bodies or authorities who are entrusted to receive complaints from detainees about detention conditions generally results in a dilution of stakeholders’ responsibility to report criminal offences to Law Enforcement Authorities in a timely manner, as was the case in the Forest trial in Belgium (see box below). Internal and administrative investigations also delay the intervention of Law Enforcement Authorities which negatively impact the preservation of evidence that may only be collected by Law Enforcement Authorities. Impunity resulting from the lack of political will to investigate and prosecute Despite evidence that violent crime does occur in detention, there are very few criminal investigations, prosecutions and Good practice – Austria Prison authorities in Austria have the obligation to inform the Public Prosecutor's office if a detainee has been a victim of violence, a dangerous threat or whose sexual integrity has been compromised. They also have the obligation to inform Victim Support Services by phone and in writing after obtaining the victim’s consent to do so (for data protection reasons). Prison authorities must grant facilitated access to the prison and to the prisoner to Victim Support Services, as they do for lawyers, social institutions, the police etc. Consultations between Victim Support Services and the prisoner are to be held where confidentiality can be respected. convictions. In the immigration setting, it has been reported that “[e]ven when cases of abuse have been exposed, there is a lack of accountability and prosecution.”102 Complaints filed against Detention Staff (or the police) are often dismissed before investigations start. This is explained by several factors identified above, but also by a lack of political will to follow up on allegations of violence in detention. If the victim is not proactive, Law Enforcement Authorities rarely investigate ex officio. This attitude can, in part, be explained by the detention context described above, including the deeply ingrained conceptual dichotomy between offenders and victims, and the normalisation of violence in detention. In Sweden, research indicated that detainees who are victims of crime are a very low priority, both those in immigration detention and in pre-trial detention. According to police authorities in Sweden, it is difficult investigate crimes if the victim does not want to participate, which is often the case in detention. In immigration detention, where (as in Hungary) the police may be in charge of security within the Detention Centre, conflicts of interest may prevent them from investigating abuse committed by them or colleagues. When victims are deported and no longer in the territory, Law Enforcement Authorities tend to close the case or dismiss complaints, as in several cases of allegations of violence in Belgium.103 Finally, there is a generalised lack of data available to allow for sufficient oversight of investigations, prosecution and dismissal of cases when the victim is a detainee. In the Netherlands, the Committee Against Torture (“CAT”) expressed concern at the lack of disaggregated data available regarding the number of complaints, investigations, prosecutions, convictions and sanctions in cases of torture and ill-treatment.104 102 PICUM, Guide to the EU Victims’ Directive: Advancing Access to Protection, Services and Justice for Undocumented Migrants, 2015, p. 15, citing Migreurop, The Hidden Face of Immigration Detention Camps in Europe, published in 2014 (“[e]ven when cases of abuse have been exposed, there is a lack of accountability and prosecution”), available at: http://picum.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/VictimsDirectiveGuide_Justice_EN.pdf. 103 Contrary to the ECtHR decision in Csonka v. Hungary (2019) (“The fact that the applicant signed a waiver before his release carries little weight, since this happened while the applicant was still at the police station, in all likelihood under the influence of the preceding situation and in the presence of the officers who had allegedly ill-treated him”). 104 CAT, Concluding observations on the seventh periodic report of the Netherlands, CAT/C/NLD/7, 18 December 2018, para. 56, available at: https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents/NLD/CAT_C_NLD_CO_7_33166_E.pdf. 36