2009 VIOLATION REPORT ON PRISONS

2009 Violation Report on Prison was prepared through press survey (no data was used repeatedly) and applications to HRA Head Quarter and HRA Branches between 01 January 2009 and 31 December 2009. According to this report, in prisons in Turkey 24 persons were dead and 49 heavily sick persons were not released. Meanwhile, comparing to the previous year torture and ill-treatments, violations of right to health, violations based on nutrition, accommodation and physical conditions, violation on implementation of deployment, violation on non-implementation of the Notice No. 45/1 and claims about body-search and prevention of visits increased dramatically. Although at the end of 2008 there were 103.235 people (58.028 are detainees, 45.207 are condemned), this number increased to approximately 118.000 people. Recently according to statistics given in February 2010 by the Ministry of Justice, there are 118.929 persons (58.331 people were detainees, 60.598 people were condemned) in prison. 2.544 of them are detained children and 245 of them are condemned children. These high rates of prisoners create heavy violations by themself.

The most important reason of not liberating heavily sick prisoners in prisons is unlawful implementations of the Forensic Medicine Institution. Giving authority about heavily sick prisoners to the universities’ Forensic Medicine departments and Research Hospitals of the Ministry of Health by discharging the Law on Criminal Execution and the Forensic Medicine Institution will make important contribution for solving this problem. Moreover, while the President uses non-legally binding pardoning power, he needs to give up implementation of referring to report of the Forensic Medicine Institution.

The number of implementations of arbitrary and disciplinary punishments decreased gradually comparing to the previous year. The reason is precautions taken by the authorities facing by the fact that the number of applications to the ECHR increased. Yet claims on violations are still high in this area. In the Law Draft about children, there is a remarkable development in facts that making legal complaints against punishments will be taken to trial and Judge of Execution will be able to visit to prisons.

Speech ban and preventions about Kurdish language decreased comparing to the previous year. The usage of the Kurdish language is limitedly allowed by changing the Legislation.

2009 BALANCE SHEET OF VIOLATION IN PRISONS