Following the report presented on Tuesday by the Council of Europe’s Anti-Torture Committee (CPT), which also examined Austrian prisons, Amnesty International Austria has criticized the sometimes “inhumane conditions” and “dilapidated conditions” in prisons. The NGO called for fundamental reforms and immediate action. The government “can no longer close its eyes,” says Stephan Handl of Amnesty International Austria.
The CPT delegation examined parts of Austrian prisons at the end of 2021. In its final report, the CPT Austria gave neither an excellent nor a devastating testimony. For example, a large majority of those interviewed by the delegation “made no allegations of mistreatment by police officers”. However, there were some complaints of excessive handcuffing and verbal abuse by police. Individual psychiatric-forensic facilities were also assessed positively.
However, Amnesty stressed that the delegation did not visit all institutions. Facilities such as the Vordernberg detention center in Styria or the Rossauer Lände police detention center in Vienna, where there are allegations of abuse, were not included in the report. In general, the NGO also identified the most pressing problems in the deportation centers.
Greens are calling for the demolition of the controversial police detention center
Since the first visit in 2014, the CPT has also noted a “significant” deterioration in Austria’s largest deportation center, the Police Detention Center (PAZ) in Vienna-Hernalser Gurtel. In general, the atmosphere in the police detention center is said to have been “extremely prison-like and oppressive” due to the heavy iron doors, barred windows and fences separating the units. The conditions are not suitable for “extended periods of detention awaiting deportation”. Georg Bürstmayr, Greens spokesman for home affairs and security, commented on the findings that the house was a “relic of the 19th century. […] eventually broke down”.
Criticism of medical care in facility
The CPT also criticized gaps in medical care – especially in psychiatry. Amnesty also saw it that way: in early 2022, for example, only two psychiatrists were available at Stein Prison for a total of 18 hours a week to care for the approximately 800 inmates, including more than 100 in prison. “Since then, only one additional psychiatrist has been employed in Stein for ten hours a week,” the NGO said.
Amnesty also complained, following the committee’s lead, about the lack of leisure facilities for the vast majority of pre-trial detainees in the prisons visited. “The only out-of-cell activities offered to inmates are an hour of outdoor exercise and one or two 60- to 90-minute exercise sessions per week. As a result, affected inmates are often confined to their cells for up to 23 hours a day,” criticized the NGO.
Source: Krone
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