We are pleased to invite you to join an online conference on prisoners’ access to justice on Monday 21 September at 13:00 CET.
The conference will feature around 20 speakers from about 10 countries – former prisoners, civil society activists, legal practitioners, judges, monitoring bodies, researchers – each bringing their perspective on the issue at hand.
Simultaneous interpretation will be provided in English, French, Greek, Portuguese and Ukrainian.
Register now and receive the meeting link >>
RATIONALE
The recognition of prisoners’ access to justice, under the influence of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, has been a central achievement of the past two decades from the perspective of individual rights, and a key driver of domestic efforts to address systemic problems in prison systems. However, little attention has been paid to the practical conditions that enable prisoners to exercise that right and transform rights’ violations into legally articulated claims capable of persuading a judge.
How do prisoners gain access to relevant legal information to identify rights violations, in a field where domestic, European and international legal frameworks overlap? How do they navigate multiple procedures, each with its own admissibility criteria and rules? How do prisoners secure evidence and deal in practice with the adversarial relationship created by legal proceedings against the prison administration?
Building on findings of the project DIGNITY conducted by the Center for European and Constitutional Law, the European Prison Litigation Network, the Human Rights Center ZMINA and Forum Penal – Associação de Advogados Penalistas, the present event aims to answer these questions by highlighting the structural, procedural and financial barriers impeding prisoners’ effective access to legal assistance across Europe and underscoring the crucial role played by external actors, in particular lawyers, in securing access to justice from within detention.
The discussions also aim to address the cornerstone role of lawyers in “upholding the rule of law, securing access to justice and ensuring the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms” [1] in the current political context, where criminal justice issues tend to be instrumentalised for political gain at the cost of the fundamental principles of the rule of law. While mobilisation at the national level is necessary, collective action to reinforce procedural rights through international instruments is equally essential to establish common safeguards. Several instruments aiming to guarantee prisoners’ access to justice exist [2] but either their scope is limited or their non-binding nature leaves a wide margin of appreciation to States. They also appear increasingly ill-suited to an evolving European criminal policy landscape. [3]
[1] Council of Europe, Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer, 2025, Preamble.
[2] E.g., UNODC, United Nations Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems, 2013; European Commission, Recommendation on procedural rights of suspects and accused persons subject to pre-trial detention and on material detention conditions, 2022.
[3] Penal policy experts analyse the recent upward trajectory of prison population rates, after a decade-long decline, as “the potential beginning of a new phase in European penal policy”. See Marcelo F. Aebi & Edoardo Cocco, Prisons and Prisoners in Europe 2025: Key Findings of the SPACE I survey, 2026, p. 28.
PROGRAMME
The event will approach the issue of prisoners’ access to justice through multiple perspectives, including:
- Obstacles to prisoners’ access to a lawyer in high security prisons, with interventions from Benoît David (Member of the Paris Bar Council) and Nancy Dekens (Secretary of the Netherlands Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers);
- The approach of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) on access to effective complaints procedures in prison, analysed by CPT member Dmitro Yagunov;
- The European campaign to strengthen Bar Presidents’ right to visit places of detention, explained by the Delegation of the French Bars in Brussels, which is playing a key role in this campaign;
- The articulation between prison monitoring and prison litigation to enforce prisoners’ rights, unpacked by Marc Nève, President of the Belgian Central Prison Monitoring Council.
… and more!
The full programme will be published shortly.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
This event is organised within the framework of the project “DIGNITY: Bridging Views for a Rights-Based Approach to Pre-Trial Detention”, funded by the European Union.
Funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed are those of the organisers and speakers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.