Dear readers,
in front of you is the Report on the Performance of Activities of the National Preventive
Mechanism for 2016, prepared with the goal to contribute to the prevention of torture and
other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in Croatia. It is an analysis of the
state of human rights of persons deprived of their liberty and those who are not allowed to
leave a facility under public supervision on their own accord.
Just as in each Report, since we began performing the activities of the National Preventive
Mechanism (NPM) in 2012, the analysis is based on our work in individual complaints as well as
preventive visits. In 2016 we worked on 497 cases and conducted 32 visits.
The Report includes the prison and the police system, psychiatric and social care institutions as
well as protection of rights of applicants for international protection and irregular migrants. It
also includes recommendations to the authorities, aimed at strengthening the protection of
human rights of the persons deprived of their liberty, as well as the overview of NPM activities.
I am glad to say we found no treatment or conditions that could represent torture, however
we have found those that could represent degrading, or even inhuman treatment, as well as
violation of constitutional and legal rights. The shortcomings are mostly caused by flawed
normative framework, inconsistent treatment, failure to comply with the standards, lack of
financial and human resources and lack of education on human rights among employees of the
facilities under the NPM authorities.
The situation within the prison system has not changed significantly in 2016. One of the biggest
concerns is still caused by the fact that the healthcare of prisoners is organized within the
Ministry of Justice, not as part of the public healthcare system, which puts prisoners in an
unequal position compared to the general public. On the other hand, the overcrowding has
continued to be reduced, but still remains a problem within some prisons, reaching as much as
132,5% of their capacities.
Police treatment is still one of the most common reasons for citizens’ complaints, especially for
situations that include the use of force and result in deprivation of liberty, and those have been
filed by the elderly as well. The situation makes the lack of sufficient civil policing oversight,
which has still not been established, even more worrying.
Even though there have been some improvements in 2016, the persons with mental disorders
are still sometimes placed in unacceptable conditions. In addition, they are sometimes deprived
of their liberty longer than necessary because of the duration of the decision-making procedure
for terminating involuntary hospitalization, and insufficiently precise legal regulations. A
significant problem is the fact that a certain number of people are still placed in a psychiatric
institution, even though they are no longer in need of hospital care, but of social services, which
are not provided to them.