No torture in prisons, conditions inhumane

BELGRADE - There are no systemic forms of torture in Serbian prisons, but the conditions in them are inhumane due to overcrowding, a conference on the results of a study conducted by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia was told on Friday.

The prisons lack doctors, and security staff - with whom 90 percent of inmates have the least problems - is insufficient, too, a press conference was told.

The activists of the non-governmental organisation backed the opening of the offices for alternative sanctions, where 673 convicts served their sentences in 2014, but said that the offices should hire more people and be more independent in their work.

The Helsinki Committee presented to reporters the results of a study conducted between September and December this year in six prison institutions, praising the officials of the Prison Administration and the Ministry of Justice for making monitoring, conversations with inmates and access into documentation possible in each institution.

All prisons lack security staff - 50 more security guards are needed in Nis and another 30 in Valjevo, while the security staff in Pozarevac should be boosted by about a third, said Ljiljana Palibrk, an associate of the NGO.

Palibrk described as positive the fact that 90 percent of inmates say that they perceive members of the security staff as the people closest to them and that they have the least problems with them.

Enforcement measures are still applied, but to a lesser degree than before, and are only used in exceptional cases, with no cases of torture registered during visits to prisons, Palibrk said.

The large population of inmates in prisons is a problem that leads to inhumane living and working...