-26 3.1. When does violence amount to torture and other forms of ill-treatment? The prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment not only requires prison officials to refrain from acts of torture or other illtreatment but also to take measures to prevent and protect prisoners from risks to their safety and personal security. When a state deprives a person of their liberty, it has a positive obligation, a duty of care, towards them. This means that the authorities must maintain his/her safety by exercising effective control over places of deprivation of liberty and protecting them from all types of physical, sexual or emotional abuse. This obligation covers risks arising from the prison estate and its management, such as excessive violence committed by prison staff towards prisoners (see also below § 3.2.1.4). It also implies, however, that state authorities may be held accountable for acts of torture and other forms of ill-treatment perpetrated by private actors, if they know or should have known that acts of torture or ill treatment were being committed and they failed to exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish such non-State or private actors in accordance with the Convention.25 This may, for example, be the case with inter-prisoner violence, self-harm and suicide. Finally, it is important to remember that also mental anxiety caused by the threat of violence and the anticipation of such can amount to a form of ill-treatment.26 3.2. Standards to prevent the risk of violence 3.2.1. Security and safety The term security in the context of deprivation of liberty is generally understood as the risk of escape of the detainees and the potential risk 25. See Committee against Torture (CAT Committee), ‘General Comment No 2 on the Implementation of Article 2 by the States parties’ (2008) CAT/C/GC/2, § 18; for a commentary on Arts 1 and 16 of the CAT see also Manfred Nowak, Moritz Birk, Giuliana Monina, The United Nations Convention Against Torture and its Optional Protocol (OUP 2019) 23ff and 441 ff [hereinafter: Nowak/Birk/Monina]; for an overview of the ECtHR jurisprudence see CoE, ‘The Prohibition of Torture: A Guide to the Implementation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Human Rights Handbooks, No 6’ (CoE 2002) and ECtHR, ‘Guide on the Case-Law of the European Convention on Human Rights: Prisoners’ Rights’ (2021) [hereinafter: ECtHR, Guide: Prisoners’ Rights]. 26. E.g. CAT Committee, Dadar v Canada, No 258/2004, 23 November 2005, §§ 2.3 and 8.6; Human Rights Committee (HRC) Njaru v Cameroon, No 1353/2005, 19 March 2007, §§ 3.1, 6.1; ECtHR, D.F. v Latvia, No 11160/07, 29 October 2013, § 85; ECtHR, Rodić and Others v Bosnia and Herzegovina, No 22893/05, 27 May 2008.