18 Dec Restrictions on family visits in the prisons

The European Court of Human Rights held that there has been a violation of the Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in the case of Resin v. Russia (application 9348/14, 18/12/2018). The case concerned a convicted prisoner’s complaint about restrictions on family visits.

The applicant, Andrey Resin, is a Russian national who is serving a life sentence in the Sverdlovsk Region (Russia). He served his sentence from 2012 to 2014 in penal colony IK-56 in the Sverdlovsk Region, which is 7,000 kilometres from his home town of Khabarovsk. During his time in this facility he was able to have six short visits from his family, with a glass partition separating them and supervised by a prison officer. He made a request to have visits without such restrictions, but it was rejected. When transferred to a remand prison in Khabarovsk for two months in 2014 as part of an investigation, he requested to have both short and long visits with his family. The governor rejected his request for a long visit because the applicable law did not allow them for convicted prisoners taken to a remand prison from a correctional facility as part of an investigation.

Relying in particular on Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life), Mr Resin complained that the restrictions on his family visits in the penal facility and remand prison had been excessive.

The Court found that the Government did not explain the legitimate aim or give any justification for the impugned measure. Nor did they provide any information which could have explained the general policy choice made by the legislature in favour of denying long-stay family visits to the individuals in the applicant’s situation who have been moved to a remand centre. By contrast, “stationary” categories of convicted prisoners, including those who served their sentence in the same remand prison to which the applicant had been transferred, did not forfeit their right to long-stay visits. It also notes that the Khabarovsk remand prison was equipped with visiting facilities suitable for long-stay visits. The Court found therefore that the restriction did not pursue a legitimate aim and was not “necessary in a democratic society”.

References from the official website of the European Court of Human Rights