site.btaCouncil of Europe Says Bulgaria Made Little Improvements in Prisons, Social Care Institutions Have Inhuman and Degrading Conditions

Strasbourg, May 4 (BTA) - Bulgaria has made little improvements in petinetiary establishments but the conditions in social care establishments remain inhuman and degrading, the Council of Europe (CoE) said in a report released Friday by its Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). The report follows visits to police, penitentiary, psychiatric establishments and social care establishments in Bulgaria between September and October 2017.

The CPT found "a slight improvement in the treatment of persons in police custody since 2015, especially as regards the severity of alleged ill-treatment". Its delegation, however, received "many allegations of physical ill-treatment from persons (including juveniles) who had been detained by the police", the CoE said in a summary of the report.

The delegation visited the Special Home for Accommodation of Foreigners in Lyubimets and received complaints of physical ill-treatment, and disrespectful attitude by custodial staff. It found the living conditions in the facility to be very poor, access to health care inadequate, interpretation arrangements missing, and total lack of baby food, clothes or toys for more than 40 minors accompanying their parents.

As regards prisons, the Committee welcomes the steps taken by the Bulgarian authorities to improve the situation and encourages them to continue their efforts, especially in the prison refurbishment programme.

The Committee noted, however, that maintenance and hygiene were poor, including in recently refurbished facilities.

The report says that corruption remains a serious issue in Bulgarian prisons, with prison staff continuing to be the major source of contraband coming into prisons. The delegation had very few allegations of ill-treatment by prison staff but inter-prisoner violence remains a grave problem almost everywhere.

There is a serious shortage of healthcare staff in prisons, and the Committee calls upon the Bulgarian authorities to reinforce health-care team, as well as to increase custodial staffing levels in prisoner accommodation areas.

As for psychiatric establishments, the CPT delegation received allegations of threats and physical violence against patients by orderlies at Radnevo Psychiatric Hospital. It also found dispidated conditions; not enough access to fresh air for many of the patients in locked wards; lack of psychiatrists and clinical staff; in-patients employed to act as orderlies.

The Committee calls on to Bulgarian authorities to take urgent measures to address the serious recruitment difficulties regarding medical, auxiliary and multi-disciplinary clinical staff in psychiatric hospitals.

In one particular homes for persons with psychiatric disorders, hygiene conditions were found to be inhuman and degrading, with residents found lying on their beds covered in flies, and floors littered with human waste.

In another facility (Kachulka), three seriously mentally disabled residents were placed in reinforced locked rooms for days on end even though recourse to seclusion is forbidden by Bulgarian law.

"The CPT cannot escape the sober conclusion that residents in the social care establishments visited had de facto been abandoned by the State, which had manifestly failed to provide those vulnerable persons with the human contact, comfort, care and assistance they required, as well as the dignity they deserved. It is equally regrettable that staff and the management of these establishments had been left to struggle from day to day with totally insufficient human resources, without adequate funding and without any attention or support from the Bulgarian authorities," the report says.