This compilation brings together the most important judgments and decisions on prison issues handed down by the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union.
By reporting on the main trends in European prison case law, it aims to support legal practitioners in the prison field in their research and litigation, as well as to identify blind spots in European case law and to build strategic litigation avenues.
EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
YASAK v. TÜRKİYE [GC] ■ Application no. 17389/20
Prisoner held in an overcrowded prison unit, constrained to sleep on a mattress in common areas for 14 months (including four consecutive months); sole circumstance that a prisoner slept on a mattress in itself insufficient to lead to a finding of violation of Article 3, despite CPT standards on this matter; prolonged deprivation of adequate conditions for sleep (owing to artificial light, noise and comings and goings in the common area) constituted a particularly heavy physical and psychological burden; overcrowding impacted on the applicant’s access to sanitary facilities, the courtyard, and cultural and recreational activities: violation of Article 3 (Joint partly dissenting opinion of Judges Vehabović, Schukking, Chanturia, Yüksel, Seibert-Fohr, Roosma, Guerra Martins and Ní Raifeartaigh).
POULSEN v. DENMARK ■ Application no. 34232/24
Prisoner confined to a restrained bed for approximately 14 hours; domestic authorities’ acknowledgement of a violation; compensation awarded significantly below the Court’s practice; Government’s use of the sum awarded to offset the applicant’s public debt incompatible with the Court’s case-law; victim status retained: violation of Article 3 (substantive aspect).
KRÁTKY v. SLOVAKIA (dec.) ■ Application no. 42029/22
Life sentence prisoners segregated from the general prison population and held under a strict regime for two years and eight months; CPT report describing the detention regime of life sentence prisoners in the country as “very restrictive” and associated with “draconian security measures”; Court stressing that its “role is conceptually different from that assigned to the CPT”; applicants’ social interaction, out-of-cell activities and material detention conditions deemed satisfactory; prison records did not disclose that the applicants had complained about the impacts of their detention regime on their mental or physical health: complaint under Article 3 inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded).
B.M. v. SWITZERLAND ■ Application no. 50227/21
Prisoner held in preventive detention since 2005, following his conviction for sexual assault of minors; rejection in 2021 of his application for release on licence, based on a comprehensive and thorough assessment of all the facts of the case, in particular the applicant’s age, which found that there remained a significant risk that the applicant would commit further serious child abuse offences if released: no violation of Article 5 § 1 (a).
Applicant not given the opportunity to be heard during administrative proceedings concerning his application for conditional release; need to hear the applicant justified by his vulnerable situation and the absence of a recent forensic assessment: violation of Article 5 § 4 (Joint partly dissenting opinion of ad hoc Judge Ranzoni and Judge Grigoryan).
Applicant complaining about detention conditions not suited to his old age, and about his detention regime and the lack of escorted leaves: complaints under Article 3 and Article 8 inadmissible (non-exhaustion of domestic remedies).
PELLE v. ITALY ■ Application no. 23710/24
Life sentence prisoner suffering from lower limb paraplegia requiring permanent physiotherapy; applicant’s need for constant physiotherapy repeatedly established by medical reports and judicial decisions; court rejecting the applicant’s request to be placed under house arrest on health grounds and declaring the applicant fit for detention, without appointing a medical expert, and on the sole basis of a report prepared by the prison health authorities; prison health authorities’ report failed to explain how physiotherapy would be delivered and contradicted the prison authorities’ earlier acknowledgement that they could not provide continuous physiotherapy treatment: violation of Article 3.
EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
YASAK v. TÜRKİYE [GC] ■ Application no. 17389/20 ■ Grand Chamber ■ 5 May 2026
This summary focuses only on the applicant’s complaint under Article 3 of the Convention.
Art 43 ■ Government’s request to reconsider the referral decision of the Grand Chamber panel rejected ■ Appropriateness of the decision not to be assessed by the Grand Chamber ■ Case, in so far as declared admissible, automatically referred to the Grand Chamber to be decided afresh.
Art 3 ■ Prisoner detained in overcrowded prison units, constrained to sleep on a mattress for a total of 14 months (including four consecutive months) ■ Prisoners sleeping on a rota system (two months in a bunk bed and one month on a mattress on the floor) ■ Sole circumstance that a prisoner had to sleep on a mattress is not contrary to Art 3, despite CPT standards in this matter ■ Cumulative conditions of the applicant conditions ■ Overcrowding negatively impacted overall detention conditions, including access to sanitary facilities, courtyard, and cultural and recreational activities.
Facts ■ The applicant was detained for over four years in the L-type prison in Çorum for membership of the organisation designated by the Turkish authorities as “Fetullahist Terrorist Organisation/Parallel State Structure” (FETÖ/PDY), to which the Turkish authorities attribute responsibility for the attempted coup of 15 July 2016.
The applicant complained about his detention conditions at Çorum prison and alleging in particular that he lacked personal space and had to sleep on a mattress on the floor, in the common areas of the prison units, for about 14 months where he had been allocated. He also complained under Article 7 about his criminal conviction, arguing that the acts for which he was convicted were lawful at the time when he had purportedly committed them. The present summary focuses only on the applicant’s detention conditions.
By a judgment handed down on 27 August 2024, the Court (Second Section) found that there had been no violation of Article 3 or Article 7. In the Chamber judgment, although the Court expressed its “concern” at the fact that the applicant had to sleep on a mattress on the floor (contrary to CPT standards), it did not consider that “this aspect, taken in isolation or in conjunction with other material aspects of his detention, subjected him to distress or hardship of an intensity greater than the inevitable level of suffering inherent in detention” (§ 113 of the Chamber judgment). In his concurring opinion, Judge Krenc expressed concern that such a decision risked “trivialising such conditions of detention and, by the same token, relativising the requirements of Article 3 of the Convention” (§ 9 of the concurring opinion).
On 26 November 2024 the applicant requested that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber under Article 43 of the Convention. On 16 December 2024 a panel of the Grand Chamber granted that request.
Law ■ Preliminary issues
The Court rejected the Government’s request to reconsider the decision of the Grand Chamber panel to accept the referral request. The Government submitted that since the applicant sought to withdraw his application at the Chamber stage (due to the possible repercussions of the delivery of the Chamber judgment on his private life and the use allegedly made of statements by witnesses who had benefited from the “active repentance” regime), he was not entitled to make this referral request. The Court stated that when a case has been duly referred at the request of one of the parties, “it is not for the Grand Chamber to assess the appropriateness of the decision made by the panel” (§ 134).
The Court also rejected the Government’s objection that the request for referral to the Grand Chamber should be declared inadmissible for abuse of the right of individual application, as the application allegedly sought to challenge the Turkish courts’ classification of the FETÖ/PDY as an armed terrorist organisation and therefore did not raise any serious question relating to the interpretation or application of the Convention. The Court recalled that declaring an individual application as “abusive” is an exceptional procedural measure which requires “not only manifest inconsistency with the purpose of the right of application but also some hindrance to the proper functioning of the Court or to the smooth conduct of the proceedings before it” (§ 135). The fact that the applicant, after having requested that his application be struck out, changed his mind, “may seem surprising […but] cannot be regarded as amounting to an ‘abuse’ of the right of individual application” (§ 137). The Court also stressed that the applicant’s status of victim cannot be called into question in the circumstances of the case, and his conduct did not impede the proper conduct of the proceedings before the Grand Chamber.
Law ■ Article 3
(1) Admissibility
The Court rejected the Government’s objection that, in his request for referral, the applicant based his arguments exclusively on Article 7 and had not objected to the fact that the Chamber judgment had found no violation of Article 3. The Court noted that it will review the entire complaint, as declared admissible by the Chamber – “and the fact that the applicant did not include arguments [on this matter] in his request for referral does not preclude its consideration” (§ 226).
The Court also rejected the Government’s argument that the applicant had not exhausted available remedies. It reiterated its previous findings that “with the exception of an individual application to the Constitutional Court, it could not be concluded with a sufficient degree of certainty that Turkish law provided a detained person with a preventive and/or compensatory remedy whereby he or she could challenge effectively the conditions of detention” (§ 231).
(2) Merits
The Court noted that in both units in which the applicant had been detained, his personal space varied between 3.6 and 4.6 sq. m and between 4 and 6 sq. m. Under these circumstances, in considered that there was no strong presumption of a violation of Article 3 and went on to examine the other aspects of the applicant’s material detention conditions.
Although the general detention conditions (cleanliness, ventilation, lighting, access to an external courtyard) appeared satisfactory, the Court stressed that they should be examined taken into account the duration of detention in an overcrowded environment.
As regards the applicant’s sleeping conditions, the Court declared established that the applicant was required to sleep on a mattress on the floor for a total of 14 months (including four consecutive months) and that prisoners slept on a rota system (two months in a bunk bed and one month on a mattress on the floor). In the absence of evidence capable of contradicting the applicant’s arguments, the Court also accepted that the mattress was placed in the communal area, therefore exposing the applicant to overnight lighting.
As in the Chamber judgment, the Court, after having recalled the CPT’s “fundamental principle of ‘one prisoner, one bed’”, recalled that “to date, it has never found a violation of Article 3 solely because a detainee has been required to sleep on a mattress on the floor, except where the personal space afforded to the applicant in that situation was less than 3 sq. m and there were other unacceptable conditions of detention” (§ 243).
However, in the circumstances of the case, and specifically the fact that the applicant had to sleep in communal areas depriving him of privacy, under constant artificial light and exposed to the disturbances caused by the continuous comings and goings of the other detainees, the Court considered that his “prolonged deprivation of adequate conditions for sleep must have constituted a particularly heavy physical and psychological burden” (§ 244).
Lastly, the Court noted that the persistent overcrowding of Çorum Prison during the applicant’s detention had an impact on the applicant’s living conditions – from access to sanitary facilities not sufficiently equipped for a high number of prisoners, to access to outdoor exercise and capacity to participate in cultural and recreational activities. That hardship could not be qualified as temporary as they persisted for approximately four years.
Conclusion ■ Violation of Article 3 (Joint partly dissenting opinion of Judges Vehabović, Schukking, Chanturia, Yüksel, Seibert-Fohr, Roosma, Guerra Martins and Ní Raifeartaigh).
Article 41 ■ EUR 2,800 in respect of non-pecuniary damage in respect of Article 3 (in respect of Article 7, the Court held that that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction); EUR 9,050 in respect of costs and expenses.
POULSEN v. DENMARK ■ Application no. 34232/24 ■ Fourth Section Committee ■ 5 May 2026
Art 3 (substantive) ■ Continuous confinement to a restraint bed for approximately 14 hours ■ Domestic acknowledgment of the violation and award of compensation insufficient to remove victim status ■ Compensation significantly below the Court’s own awards in comparable cases and covering unrelated incidents ■ Setting-off of the compensation against the applicant’s public debt incompatible with the Court’s case-law.
Art 3 (procedural) ■ Complaint regarding the effectiveness of the reopened investigation manifestly ill-founded.
Facts ■ On 31 August 2023, as she started serving her prison sentence, the applicant opposed sharing a cell with an inmate. Following the dispute that arose, she was placed in a safety cell and confined to a restrained bed from 12:45 a.m. on that day, until 9:57 a.m. on the next day.
Her criminal complaint was dismissed by the regional prosecutor, who, following interviews with her and prison officers, found that no basis for criminal proceedings could be established. Her claim for compensation was accepted. The Department of Prisons and Probation found that although the initial period of her confinement (until 7:45 p.m.) had been justified, her continued confinement for another 14 hours until the next morning had been excessive. She was awarded approximately EUR 2,700, a sum covering also two incidents not related to the case.
She complained before the Court that she had been subjected to violence by prison officers, confined to a restraint bed and that the investigation into these events had been ineffective.
Law ■ Article 3
(1) Substantive limb
The Court specified that she focused on the complaints as initially formulated by the applicant and did not deal with elements added in the applicant’s observations before the Court, i.e. that she had been denied a medical examination and had been forced to clean up her own bodily fluids.
As regards the violence to which the applicant had been allegedly subjected, the Court considered that the applicant had failed to submit any argument that would convince the Court to depart from the conclusion reached by the regional prosecutor and dismissed this part of the complaint as manifestly ill-founded.
As regards her confinement to a restrained bed, the Court observed that the domestic authorities acknowledged that the applicant’s continued confinement for approximately 14 hours to a restrained bed amounted to a violation of Article 3. According to the Court, despite the compensation awarded at national level, the applicant had not lost her victim status. The Court found this sum (which also included compensation for two unrelated incidents) to be “significantly lower than that which the Court would award in compensation for non-pecuniary damage in similar cases” (§ 16), and stressed that the fact that the Government used the compensation awarded to the applicant to offset public debt that she had accumulated was contrary to its case law.
Consequently, holding that the applicant had not been afforded appropriate redress, it declared that there had been a violation of Article 3 under its substantive aspect.
(2) Procedural limb
The Court dismissed this part of the complaint. It noted that following a first dismissal of her criminal complaint in July 2014 (on the basis of interviews with the applicant and a prison officer), the regional prosecutor reopened the investigation ex officio in February 2025. After having conducted i.a. interviews with 14 prison officers, it reached the same conclusion. The Court considered that there was no indication that the investigation had been ineffective.
Conclusion ■ Violation of Article 3 (substantive), no violation of Article 3 (procedural).
Article 41 ■ EUR 10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; EUR 10,000 in respect of costs and expenses.
KRÁTKY v. SLOVAKIA (dec.) ■ Application no. 42029/22 ■ First Section Committee ■ 7 May 2026
Art 3 ■ Life sentence prisoners held under strict regime during two years and eight months ■ CPT report mentioning a “very restrictive regime” and “draconian security measures” ■ Court stressed that its “role is conceptually different from that assigned to the CPT” ■ Individual circumstances of the cases (social interaction, out-of-cell activities, material detention conditions) did not disclose a violation of Art 3 ■ No impact of their prison regime on their health reported by the applicants, according to prison records.
Facts ■ The two applicants, life sentence prisoners, complained about their strict detention regime, which they describe as solitary confinement. Their complaint concerns both their pre-trial detention (March 2017 – July 2021) and their life sentence (July 2021 – February 2024).
Law ■ Article 3
(1) Admissibility
The Court accepted the Government’s objection that the part of the complaint concerning the applicants’ pre-trial detention (March 2017 – July 2021) was belated. Having noted that following the applicants’ conviction and their transfer to wings for life-sentenced prisoners, “the conditions of [their] detention, including the reasons for their separate accommodation, started to be governed by a completely different set of rules” (§ 11), it considered that this change in status put an end to the “continuing situation” of their detention regime. Therefore, in the absence of domestic remedy in this regard, the applicants should have lodged their complaint within six months after their transfer. Accordingly, the Court rejected as inadmissible the applicants’ complaint concerning their pre-trial detention, and went on to examine only the period of two years and eight months corresponding to the applicants’ serving their life sentence.
(2) Merits
The Court acknowledged that “in Slovakia the segregation of life prisoners remains the primary purpose of their imprisonment” (§ 17) and that the description of their very restrictive regime provided in CPT report is accurate (see § 10 for a quote of the 2018 CPT report mentioning a “very restrictive regime” and “draconian security measures”).
However, the Court stressed that its “role is conceptually different from that assigned to the CPT” and that “when examining complaints made under Article 3 of the Convention, it must take account of the cumulative effects of the conditions of the applicants’ detention, along with their specific allegations and the length of the period during which they were detained in the conditions in question” (§ 18).
As regards the applicants’ social interaction, the Court noted that the applicant “could occasionally meet with other prisoners in the wing and were in regular contact with their family, including by means of open visits” (§ 19) were permitted unlimited telephone calls with their relatives and lawyers.
As regards the applicants’ activities within prison, the Court noted that they had a one-hour outdoor exercise daily, could “use the gym or spend time in the cultural activities room when allowed under the established schedule” (§ 20), and were permitted to use a computer several times a day “to study legal material and prepare for court hearings” (ibid.). The Court also noted that the applicants declined the work offers that were made to them (“as the opportunities available to them were limited to cell based tasks and involved activities they considered to be degrading (for example, sewing shoes) and paid at exploitative rates”, ibid.) and considered that they failed to specify to what extent they had been excluded from educational and cultural activities offered to the general prison population. The Court also found relevant to note that “during their free time the applicants were primarily focused on writing diverse submissions for the purposes of the extensive litigation they were involved in” (§ 20), echoing a reasoning made in Maslák v. Slovakia (no. 2), no. 38321/17, § 190: “although this has not been pointed out by the parties, it has not escaped the Court’s attention that, of any free time at the applicant’s disposal, a significant portion must have been dedicated to the extensive amount of litigation he was involved in”).
As regards the impact of their detention regime on their health, the Court observed that the prison records indicate that the applicant did not mention such impact and did not seek medical assistance. The Court dismissed the applicants’ contestation of the authenticity of those prison records as having been made in a generic manner and without supporting evidence.
As regards material detention conditions, the Court found that the applicants’ personal space in the cells in which the applicants were held exceeded the minimum standard promoted by the CPT. It further considered that the allegations concerning the poor detention conditions were unsubstantiated and contradictory with the CPT’s finding.
Conclusion ■ Inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded).
B.M. v. SWITZERLAND ■ Application no. 50227/21 ■ Fifth Section ■ 12 May 2026
This legal summary was prepared by the Court’s Registry.
Art 5(1)(a) ■ Detention following conviction ■ Rejection in 2021 by the Federal Court of the application for parole of the applicant, imprisoned since 2005 following his conviction for sexual offences against minors ■ Comprehensive and meticulous assessment by the national authorities of all the facts of the case, including the applicant’s age, leading them to conclude that there is a significant risk of the applicant reoffending.
Art 5 § 4 ■ Applicable ■ Procedural safeguards ■ Absence of a hearing before the administrative court ■ Applicant’s vulnerable situation and the absence of a recent forensic assessment, justified the need to hear the applicant.
Art 3 and Art 8 ■ Complaints concerning the conditions and regime of the applicant’s detention, as well as the failure to adapt his conditions of detention to take account of his age, inadmissible on the grounds of failure to exhaust domestic remedies ■ Applicant may use the available remedies to request escorted leave in order to secure the possibility of a reduction in the severity of the detention order, as well as his transfer to a facility outside the prison which he considers more appropriate ■ Applicant has been detained for several years in a section of the prison suited to his age and state of health.
Facts ■ In July 2003 the Court of Appeal, after sentencing the applicant to four years and four months’ imprisonment for multiple sexual acts with minors and multiple acts of sexual coercion, suspended that custodial sentence and ordered his placement in preventive detention, given his abnormal mental state and a high risk of reoffending. In May 2005 the applicant was placed in preventive detention in Pöschwies Prison.
From March 2010 onwards, the Court of Appeal extended that measure a number of times. From 2014 to 2021 the applicant’s applications for release on licence or for his transfer to an open facility were rejected. At his request, the applicant was transferred to Lenzburg Central Prison in December 2019.
On 11 December 2020 the Administrative Court dismissed the applicant’s application to set aside the decision of the Directorate of Justice and Internal Affairs of the Canton of Zürich rejecting his appeal against the Correctional Services and Rehabilitation Office’s decision not to release him on licence.
On 24 March 2021 the Federal Supreme Court partly dismissed the 75-year-old applicant’s appeal against the Administrative Court’s judgment and upheld the continuation of the preventive detention measure.
Since 2021 the Judicial Enforcements and Rehabilitation Office of the Canton of Zürich has repeatedly denied the applicant’s applications for release on licence.
Law ■ Articles 3 and 8
The applicant had not relied on Article 3 of the Convention or raised an equivalent complaint under domestic law before the Federal Supreme Court. Furthermore, he had mentioned Article 8 of the Convention in the heading of the substantive considerations set out in his appeal to the Federal Supreme Court, without, however, referring to that provision in the reasoning of the complaint in question, or explaining how the breach of the provisions of the Criminal Code on which he relied amounted to a violation of that guarantee.
Moreover, in his appeal to the Federal Supreme Court, the applicant had failed to make a subsidiary application, in accordance with the procedural requirements applicable under the Federal Supreme Court Act, seeking measures to alleviate his detention conditions – such as escorted leave – in the event that his application for release on licence was dismissed. Furthermore, he had failed to raise any complaint as to the alleged age-inappropriateness of his conditions of detention and of the relevant legal framework, or any resulting inhuman or degrading treatment. It was therefore unsurprising that the Federal Supreme Court had not addressed those issues in its judgment of 24 March 2021.
The Court took the view that it was for the applicant to use the available remedies to apply for escorted leave in order to be afforded the prospect of greater leniency in the enforcement of his preventive detention and to refer the matter to the courts in the event of refusal. The same also applied to any application he might make for transfer to an outside facility which he considered more appropriate to his age and state of health.
In the Court’s view, there could be no doubt that it was important for the applicant, who had been 79 years old at the time of the most recent exchanges between the parties, to be afforded living conditions appropriate to his age and state of health. However, he had not provided the Court with any specific evidence indicating that his detention conditions were inappropriate to his age or might amount to inhuman or degrading treatment. The Court observed that the applicant’s detention conditions had been adjusted to take account of his age. Since 10 December 2019, he had been held in the “60plus Section” of Lenzburg Prison, where his age-related needs and state of health were taken into account. Prior to his transfer to Lenzburg, the applicant had been placed in the Age and Health Unit of Pöschwies Prison and had thus enjoyed conditions comparable to those of the “60plus Section”.
Conclusion ■ Inadmissible (failure to exhaust domestic remedies).
Law ■ Article 5 § 1 (a)
The applicant’s preventive detention had a legal basis in domestic law. The measure had initially been justified under sub-paragraph (a) of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention because it had been imposed “after” the applicant’s conviction, that is, in a sufficient causal relationship with his 2003 conviction.
As to the persistence of the causal link between the initial conviction and the continuing deprivation of liberty, the Federal Supreme Court’s decision of 24 March 2021 not to release the applicant had been consistent with the objectives pursued by the Court of Appeal in 2003 in ordering the initial preventive detention measure, namely, averting the high risk that the applicant would commit sexual acts with minors if released.
Furthermore, the decision not to release the detainee had to be based on an assessment which was reasonable in terms of the objectives pursued by that measure by the sentencing court.
As to the risk of reoffending in view of the applicant’s age, both the judicial psychiatric evaluation of September 2014 and the privately commissioned evaluation of June 2019 had taken the applicant’s age into account in assessing that risk; the national authorities had addressed the matter of age in detail in the light of the relevant scientific literature and available statistics; and the Federal Supreme Court had used the data collected and examined as weighting criteria for its prognosis as to the applicant’s criminal conduct.
In the light of the findings resulting from the correlation of a number of separate factors, the Court considered that the Federal Supreme Court’s findings to the effect that the judicial psychiatric evaluation of 2014 remained relevant and constituted a legitimate basis for the domestic authorities’ decisions – especially in the light of numerous more recent reports on the applicant’s condition, including the 2019 privately commissioned psychiatric evaluation – had been based on a reasonable and comprehensive assessment of the evidence before it.
The Court was of the view that – in taking as a decisive factor in the assessment of the risk of reoffending the fact that, according to the concurring findings of the judicial psychiatric evaluation of September 2014 and the privately commissioned psychiatric evaluation of June 2019, the applicant had not succeeded in reflecting critically on his dangerous attitude towards the group of children to which he was drawn; the fact that he had no strategies for coping with the risk of reoffending; and the fact that there was no reason to expect a change in his behaviour in view of his constant refusal to undergo therapy designed to address the offences committed – the Administrative Court and the Federal Supreme Court had carried out an in-depth examination of the justification for the applicant’s detention. The prognosis as to the risk of his reoffending therefore remained unchanged and high. Furthermore, the Federal Supreme Court had assessed that the applicant’s use of child pornography, albeit from 2012 onwards, proved his need for blatantly sexual and sadistic satisfaction, which confirmed the prognosis in question.
As to the conditions under which the applicant could be released on licence, the courts had taken into account the concurring opinions of the two experts, who were of the view that such a decision could be contemplated only if rigorous risk-management were put in place. The measures recommended by the privately commissioned psychiatric expert in order to prevent a repeat offence in the event of release on licence, such as prohibiting contact with children and an electronic monitoring order, required that the applicant be subjected to highly structured supervision and closely monitored outside prison, the achievement and results of which were not guaranteed.
The privately commissioned psychiatric evaluation had found that, because of his age, the applicant would be likely to commit criminal acts only after prolonged contact with a child, and that his therapists and his family and friends should be in a position to identify situations of risk and intervene before he was able to act. The Court acknowledged that this scenario for warding off the risk that the applicant would reoffend was difficultly achievable in practice and created a responsibility as to the eventuality of fresh offences which could not be assumed by third parties.
As to the proportionality of the applicant’s continued detention, the Administrative Court had taken the view that the need to protect potential victims outweighed the applicant’s interest in being released on licence in view of the high risk of reoffending and the absence of any prospect of change in that regard. In the Federal Supreme Court’s assessment, the risk-management measures proposed by the privately commissioned psychiatric expert were insufficient to keep the applicant from reoffending, especially as he had not processed the fact that he needed to give up on sexual contact with children and keep away from them. The Court saw no reason to call into question the domestic courts’ conclusion on this point.
The Court was of the view that it had been on the basis of a comprehensive and thorough assessment of all the elements of the case, in particular the applicant’s age, that the domestic authorities, including the Administrative Court and the Federal Supreme Court, had concluded, giving detailed reasons and relying on numerous practical considerations, that there was still a significant risk that the applicant would again commit serious child abuse if released. The Court found that the Federal Supreme Court had adopted an approach consistent with the principles set out in its case-law on the justification for a deprivation of liberty under Article 5 § 1 (a) of the Convention when it had held that the legal interests at stake were of high importance, since it was a matter of the physical and mental well-being of children, who were vulnerable individuals. The continuation of the preventive detention measure had therefore been the only way to counter the high risk that the applicant would reoffend, as the measures provided for in the event that he was released on licence were not sufficient for that purpose. Consequently, the Court considered that the domestic authorities’ 2021 decision not to release the applicant had been based on an assessment that was reasonable in terms of the objectives pursued by the Court of Appeal in 2003 with a view to protecting minors from serious sexual offences when it had ordered the applicant’s initial placement in preventive detention.
Conclusion ■ No violation of Article 5 § 1 (a).
Law ■ Article 5 § 4
The Court further held, by five votes to two, that there had been a violation of Article 5 § 4 on account of the absence of a hearing before the Administrative Court [in proceedings concerning his application for conditional release], thereby depriving the applicant of the opportunity to be heard. In the particular circumstances of the case, it had been necessary for the Administrative Court to hear the applicant at a hearing, given that the judicial authority’s task had been to assess his personality. The need to hear the applicant had further been compounded by his vulnerable status and the lack of a recent expert opinion on which the domestic courts might have relied to make their ruling.
Conclusion ■ Violation of Article 5 § 4 (Joint partly dissenting opinion of ad hoc Judge Ranzoni and Judge Grigoryan).
Article 41 ■ EUR 10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; EUR 3,000 in respect of costs and expenses.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
PELLE v. ITALY ■ Application no. 23710/24 ■ First Section Committee ■ 21 May 2026
Art 3 (substantive) ■ Inadequate medical care of a paraplegic life-sentenced prisoner requiring permanent physiotherapy ■ Need for constant physiotherapy repeatedly established by medical reports and judicial ■ Prison health authorities’ acknowledgment that the facility lacked a rehabilitation unit and could not provide continuous programmes ■ Supervisory Court declaring the applicant fit for detention without appointing a medical expert and on the basis of a report established by the prison health authorities, not explaining how physiotherapy would be delivered
Facts ■ The applicant started serving a life sentence in 2008. In 2009, as the applicant suffers from lower limb paraplegia and uses a wheelchair, his detention was replaced with house arrest on health ground, to enable his to undergo physiotherapy. In 2011, a medical expert report concluded that his state of health was still incompatible with detention as the prison system was unable to provide him with the necessary physiotherapy treatment.
The applicant went into hiding between 2019 and 2021. After having been rearrested, he was placed in prison, where he was prescribed a daily rehabilitation programme. In May 2022, following a complaint of the applicant, the Cagliari supervisory judge ordered that he be provided with the said treatment. The applicant was placed in a special cell adapted for paraplegic prisoners and received assistance with personal hygiene and daily tasks. He received in total 29 physiotherapy sessions in 2022, but in January 2023, the Parma prison authorities acknowledged that they did not have a rehabilitation unit within the prison and lacked the necessary personnel to provide “intensive and continuous physiotherapy programmes” (§ 12).
In February 2023, the applicant requested that his detention be replaced with house detention on health grounds. In May 2023, the Parma prison health authorities declared the applicant’s state of health compatible with detention, without indicating how physiotherapy would be provided. In July 2023, the Bologna Supervisory Court rejected the applicant’s request, without seeking a medical expert’s opinion, as requested by the applicant. The applicant’s appeal was dismissed in April 2024.
In parallel with those proceedings, the applicant’s privately retained doctor reiterated that he needed daily comprehensive physiotherapy treatment in February 2023, December 2023 and April 2025.
Law ■ Article 3
(1) Admissibility
The Court dismissed the Government’s objection that the applicant had failed to exhaust the available domestic remedies. The Court reiterated that where more than one potentially effective remedy is available, the applicant is only required to use one remedy of his choice. In this respect, the Court observed that the applicant had made use of two distinct remedies: once in March 2022, where he complained about the quality of the of the treatment received in prison; and once in February 2023, where he requested that his detention be replaced by house arrest.
(2) Merits
The Court noted that although several medical reports and judicial decisions indicated the applicant’s need to receive regular physiotherapy, he underwent only 29 sessions in 2022, and none thereafter.
The Court also noted that the Bologna Supervisory Court dismissal of the applicant’s request to replace his detention with house arrest on health grounds was solely based on a May 2023 report from the prison authorities, which did not specify how physiotherapy would be provided to the applicant, and which contradicted a report from the same authorities from January 2023, acknowledging that no comprehensive physiotherapy programme could be provided. While the applicant stressed this inconsistency before the Court of Cassation, the latter dismissed his appeal and confirmed the appropriateness of the physiotherapy treatment.
Conclusion ■ Violation of Article 3
Article 41 ■ No claim.
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