2.3.3 Conditions of detention In respect of a person deprived of liberty, recourse to physical force which has not been made strictly necessary by the detainee’s own conduct is in principle an infringement of Article 3.369 However, potential violations within places of detention are not limited to violence by law enforcement officials, custodial or medical staff, or other detainees. The European Court has long considered the general conditions of detention as a potential source of violations of Article 3.370 Particularly since its judgement in Aerts v Belgium,371 the Court has examined the material conditions of detention of individuals deprived of their liberty, taking into account the cumulative effects of overcrowding, sanitation facilities, heating, lighting, sleeping arrangements, food, recreation and contact with the outside world. In Kudła v Poland, the Court stated that, under Article 3 of the Convention, “the State must ensure that a person is detained in conditions which are compatible with respect for his human dignity, that the manner and method of the execution of the measure do not subject him to distress or hardship of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in Ibid. § 31. Ibid. §31. 367 Ibid. §33. 368 See for example, Campbell and Cosans v UK (1982), op. cit., where the threatened corporal punishment was considered not to have caused sufficiently severe suffering to amount to degrading treatment. 369 Ribitsch v Austria, op. cit., §38; BerliDski v Poland, nos. 27715/95 and 30209/96, judgement of 20 June 2002, §59; Kucheruk v Ukraine, no. 2570/04, judgement of 6 September 2007, §§131–132. 370 See for example, The Greek Case (1969), op. cit., p. 504; Soering v UK (1989), op. cit. 371 Aerts v Belgium, no. 25357/94, Rep.1998-V, judgement of 30 July 1998. 2 The European Regional System of the Convention since it did not “outrage public opinion,”365 the Court held that “it must be pointed out that a punishment does not lose its degrading character just because it is believed to be, or actually is, an effective deterrent or aid to crime control.”366 While considering that the form of punishment in this case was not so severe as to amount to torture, the Court stated that “[t]he very nature of judicial corporal punishment is that it involves one human being inflicting physical violence on another human being. Furthermore it is institutionalised violence… [this] punishment constituted an assault on precisely that which it is one of the main purposes of Article 3 to protect, namely a person’s dignity and physical integrity.”367 This judgement did not, however, impose an absolute prohibition on all forms of corporal punishment. In order to be considered a violation of Article 3, the punishment must still attain a minimum level of severity.368 365 366 77