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Basic claim Are prisons in Germany worthy of human dignity?
Karlsruhe (jur). If prisoners in a community cell have only four square meters of space, they must be granted legal aid for a liability and compensation claim. Because so far it is unclear whether this is to be regarded as decent, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe in a Friday, 1 July 2016, published decision (Az .: 1 BvR 3359/14). The open and difficult question of the conditions under which inhumane housing is available can not be decided with the legal aid application but only in the main proceedings.
With this, one inmate who was imprisoned in a Bavarian prison was right. The man had to share a 16-square-meter cell with three other prisoners for 188 days. In addition to the furniture, the total area of the cell also included a separate toilet from the rest of the cell.
Is the placement in a prison inhumane? Image: © Bibi - fotolia Four square meters of space per prisoner are inhumane, said the prisoner. The prison conditions led to a loss of privacy and unreasonable burdens on the prisoners resulting from the forced close physical contact.
The Free State of Bavaria, the man wanted to sue for official liability, so as to be able to receive compensation.
However, the Regional Court of Augsburg and the Higher Regional Court (OLG) Munich refused the legal aid requested for the proceedings. According to the "necessary overall view of the circumstances of the individual case" there was no violation of human dignity. The European Court of Human Rights considered four square meters of space per person in a cell to be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. An additional minimum threshold would have German courts so far not clearly specified, so the Higher Regional Court.
Therefore, there can be no question that from the outset only four square meters of space create a compensationable violation of human dignity. The legal aid was therefore rejected because of lack of success.
By its resolution of 20 May 2016, the Federal Constitutional Court overturned the rejection of legal aid. Formally, the district court of Augsburg must now decide.
Admittedly, the granting of aid may be made dependent on whether a claim has sufficient prospects of success. However, unresolved legal issues should not be transferred to the "only summary process of legal aid". These would have to be clarified in the main proceedings, so that legal aid should not be denied in such a case.
Whether an inhumane housing exists, always depends on the overall circumstances. How exactly this is examined, but according to the case law is not clarified, so the Karlsruhe judges.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) allowed a floor space of four square meters of space per prisoner. Only when a detainee has less than three square meters of space can humiliation be assumed.
However, the Federal Court has already stressed that the requirements of the Basic Law on decent housing can be higher. In some cases, these would be called control values of six or seven square meters of floor space per prisoner. A constitutionally fixed Raummindestsoll could not exist. For example, the number of prisoners in a cell, the total floor area or even the confinement times are important.
If there were inhumane conditions of detention there could only be decided in the main proceedings and not in the upstream legal aid procedure. The rejection of legal aid had violated the complainant's claim to legal protection equality, the 3rd Chamber of the First Senate ruled. fle / mwo