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Eur J Crim Policy Res (2006) 12:121142
DOI 10.1007/s10610-006-9011-6
Jim Murdoch
Published online: 29 November 2006 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2006
Abstract The article examines the working methods and effectiveness of the Council of Europes Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the CPT) which, since 1990, has been carrying out visits to places of detention. It also examines the impact the Committee has had upon European standards and expectations, and, in particular, upon the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, and raises certain issues in respect of the establishment of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of the Committee against Torture.
Key words council of Europe . jurisprudence of the European court of human rights . places of detention . prevention of ill-treatment . visiting mechanisms
Introduction
The prohibition of torture now has the standing of a peremptory norm of general international law and covers not only the actual infliction of torture but also the failure to adopt national measures required to give force to the prohibition.1 The revulsion against the use of torture in part acts as a powerful restraint upon state excesses, but political condemnation may be an insufficiently strong enough form of sanction, and the focus upon the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering in any event may detract from consideration of the impact of poor material conditions of detention with minimal
1Prosecutor v Furundzija [1998] ICTY 3, at para. 148.
This article draws upon material to be published in The Treatment of Prisoners: European Standards (Council of Europe Press: 2006).
J. Murdoch (*)
School of Law, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected]
Tackling Ill-Treatment in Places of Detention: The Work of the Council of Europes Torture Committee
122 J. Murdoch
regime activities upon the physical and psychological well-being of the prisoner. With the entry into force of the new Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture2 becoming an ever-closer likelihood, what lessons can be drawn from the Council of Europes Torture Committee, particularly since this body has acted as the inspiration for the Subcommittee on Prevention and national preventive mechanisms? That the next stage...