TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
AP3 (Applicant): And here, with your permission, I would like to pass the word to my colleague, Ms. Eleonora
AP3 (Applicant): Pertel-Pizan.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Thank you very much, Ms. Yermolayeva.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): And now, please, Mrs. Davidyan.
AP2 (Applicant): Thank you, Mr. President, honorable judges.
AP2 (Applicant): It is necessary to point out once again that the applicants are claimed being discriminated in relations to their rights within the ambit of Article 5 and not Article 3.
AP2 (Applicant): However, speaking of the humanitarian approach used for women, minors, and seniors, we have to assess what's left for those outside of the humanitarian approach.
AP2 (Applicant): It is impossible to consider the applicant's claim without understanding what is at stake for them, without taking into account the context in which the violation is claimed, the context of Russian practices in reality.
AP2 (Applicant): In order to analyze this Russian context, first allow me to introduce the ways in which the Russian practices differ from other European countries.
AP2 (Applicant): 10 countries in Europe and almost 20 more outside Europe don't have the life sentence.
AP2 (Applicant): In some countries that do have the life sentence, the minimum term of imprisonment after which a convict is allowed to apply for early release on parole starts at as low as 12 years, as in Denmark and Finland.
AP2 (Applicant): In Ireland, the average period of detention for those serving life sentences is 12 years.
AP2 (Applicant): In Austria, release on parole is possible after 15 years of imprisonment.
AP2 (Applicant): And statistics show that in 2001, 2013, the average number of life prisoners being released on parole there per year is seven.
AP2 (Applicant): In Germany, in 2013, 93 life sentenced prisoners were released on parole or pardoned, 17 of them after serving over 25 years, 14 after serving 20 to 25 years, 45 were released after serving 15 to 20 years, and another 17 after serving 10 to 15 years.
AP2 (Applicant): Returning to Russia, the law provides for possibility of release on parole after 25 years of imprisonment.
AP2 (Applicant): Unfortunately, there are no official statistics on the number of prisoners serving life sentences who were released early on parole.
AP2 (Applicant): Although we requested this information from the Russian authorities, no adequate response was provided.
AP2 (Applicant): In the meantime, prominent human rights advocates in Russia who constantly deal with issues regarding prisoners' rights are not aware of a single case of early release on parole of a prisoner serving life sentence.
AP2 (Applicant): This includes people with serious health problems and those who managed to survive to their 70s.
AP2 (Applicant): This also includes people who have earned the support of the administration of their penal institutions, as well as the Commission on Pardons, which both recommended that this prisoner should be released on parole.
AP2 (Applicant): The only example of a change in a life sentence known to us involves the European Court's judgment, which was followed by reconsideration of the case and reduction of the sentence, as the case of Vladijagin versus Russia.
AP2 (Applicant): Therefore, to date, a life sentence in Russia is effectively irreducible.
AP2 (Applicant): This is evidenced not only by the absence of any actual examples of early release on parole, but also by the fact that nothing in the penitentiary treatment of prisoners serving life sentences shows any intention to provide an opportunity for such release.
AP2 (Applicant): Life prisoners are kept in facilities with an especially strict regime.
AP2 (Applicant): They are separated from non-life prisoners and subjected to even stricter conditions and limitations than any other category of prisoners.
AP2 (Applicant): This regime has already been criticized by this court in the case of Khoroshenko versus Russia, where it was found disproportionate to the aims of the sentence.
AP2 (Applicant): Life prisoners can maintain contact with the outside world only by corresponding in writing.
AP2 (Applicant): All other types of contacts are severely limited.
AP2 (Applicant): They cannot make any telephone calls except in an emergency.
AP2 (Applicant): And their relatives can visit them in person only every six months.
AP2 (Applicant): And the visits last for no longer than four hours and with no more than two adult visitors.
AP2 (Applicant): Prisoners are separated from their visitors by a glass partition, so they are not able to have any physical contact.
AP2 (Applicant): A prison guard is present and within hearing distance at all times.
AP2 (Applicant): These restrictions are imposed directly by law and concern the prisoners solely on the account of their life sentence and irrespective of any other factors.
AP2 (Applicant): These restrictions are all combined within one regime for a fixed duration of time and cannot be altered.
AP2 (Applicant): The regime is imposed for a fixed period of 10 years, which can be extended in the event of poor conduct while serving the sentence, but cannot be shortened.
AP2 (Applicant): After spending 10 years in a strict regime facility, in theory, a life prisoner could be transferred to a lighter regime facility.
AP2 (Applicant): But in reality, such transfers rarely happen.
AP2 (Applicant): This court has already noted that Russia was the only jurisdiction within the Council of Europe to regulate the prison visits of all life sentence prisoners as a group by combining an extremely low frequency of permitted prison visits and the lengthy duration of such a regime.
AP2 (Applicant): In all other types of penitentiary institutions, prisoners are involved in different socializing activities and educational programs, but that never happens in the institutions for those serving life sentences.
AP2 (Applicant): No efforts are made by the authorities to prepare their prisoners for law-abiding life outside of prisons, to encourage remorse or to support their reformation.
AP2 (Applicant): These prisoners are given no chance for social rehabilitation or a possibility to prove that they are capable of living within a society and contributing to it.
AP2 (Applicant): This results in the elimination of any motivation on the part of the convicts to adjust, as they are well aware that they will remain behind bars until the moment of their physical death.
AP2 (Applicant): Russian law states that the aim of criminal punishment is the reformation of the convicts as well as prevention of crime.
AP2 (Applicant): This goal is consonant with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as several other international instruments, which emphasize that efforts need to be made by the prison authorities for the reintegration and rehabilitation of all prisoners, including those serving life sentences.
AP2 (Applicant): In Russia, however, in reality, the only function of the life sentence the prisoners are serving is retribution.
AP2 (Applicant): It is just a substitute for the death penalty, because all that awaits the life prisoners is moral degradation and physical death.
AP2 (Applicant): To many convicts, their life sentence doesn't seem any less inhumane than the death penalty.
AP2 (Applicant): All the above information should be taken into account in conjunction with the fact that, in many cases, the fairness of the trials which led to life sentences remains very doubtful.
AP2 (Applicant): In fact, this court, on several occasions, found violations of Article 6 in such cases, for example, cases of Shumikhin, Shugaev, Moskovets, and Laryagin.
AP2 (Applicant): Human Rights Committee in 2000 considered the petition of Mr. Dmitry Gridin finding violation of fair trial
AP2 (Applicant): with a requirement of his immediate release.
AP2 (Applicant): All of these people, except for only Mr. Laryagin,
AP2 (Applicant): are still imprisoned with no hope for any chance to be able to return to a somewhat normal life, to be able to spend time with their families, to be able to just to have this hope.
AP2 (Applicant): Recognizing these stark realities, and the Russian authorities know them better than anyone else, leads us to the core of the issue.
AP2 (Applicant): Why should the abolition of the life sentence be deemed out of question?
AP2 (Applicant): While making this flat assertion in their observations to the court, the government did not offer any explanation.
AP2 (Applicant): What is the reason making it impossible to contemplate the abolition of the life sentence?
AP2 (Applicant): The government acknowledges that the life sentence is outside of the humanitarian approach that the authorities are exercising towards subgroups.
AP2 (Applicant): So we are all in agreement that life sentence is basically inhuman.
AP2 (Applicant): Mr. President, in conclusion, I would
AP2 (Applicant): like to underline once again that we are in no way contending that anyone's treatment should be worsened.
AP2 (Applicant): What we are claiming is that if there are people who are entitled to humanism under obligations that the state voluntarily took on, then there should not be people who are excluded from it as a result of discriminatory treatment based on their gender or age.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Thank you very much Mrs. Davidyan.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Now I call Mr. Matyushkin for the government, please.
GR1 (Government): it follows that the present case concerns the issue of imposition of a particular sentence, namely life imprisonment, on the applicants or, alternatively, its non-application to minors, women and elderly men.
GR1 (Government): At the same time, the issue of the lawfulness of the applicant's conviction or alleged arbitrariness or disproportionality of the specified punishment imposed on them is not the subject of the present case.
GR1 (Government): In this regard, the government recalled that the Court has specified that a certain margin of appreciation must be accorded to contracting states in their matters of criminal justice and sentencing.
GR1 (Government): See Winter and others versus United Kingdom.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, in its case law, the Court has reiterated that it is not its task within the context of Article V of the Convention to review the appropriateness of the sentence.
GR1 (Government): See Weeks versus United Kingdom.
GR1 (Government): It does not pronounce on the appropriate length of detention or other sentence which should be served by a person after conviction by the competent court.
GR1 (Government): See T versus United Kingdom.
GR1 (Government): Matters of appropriate sentencing largely fall outside the scope of the Convention, and it is not its role to decide, for example, what is the appropriate term of detention applicable to a particular offense.
GR1 (Government): See Svanuk versus United Kingdom.
GR1 (Government): The above position allows the government to conclude that the applicant's claims in this case fall outside of the scope of Article V of the Convention.
GR1 (Government): Meanwhile, Article XIV of the Convention may apply only in cases in which specific rights foreseen by other Articles of the Convention are at least involved, if not breached.
GR1 (Government): Therefore, in the absence of any issues under Article V of the Convention in this case, there is obviously no basis for the application of Article XIII of the Convention.
GR1 (Government): The government further note that no complaints have been raised by the applicants under Article I of Protocol No. 12 of the Convention that provides for a general prohibition of discrimination
GR1 (Government): and expands to any rights, even those which are not listed in the Convention.
GR1 (Government): Anyway, Protocol No. 12 of the Convention has not been ratified by the Russian Federation,
GR1 (Government): and therefore the applicants may not invoke this provision.
GR1 (Government): What is more, neither the Convention or the Protocols thereto, nor the Russian legislation, provide for a right of a person convicted of having committed a crime to choose a particular penalty, or even more so, for a right to request a particular penalty to be imposed on others not involved in the proceedings before this Court.
GR1 (Government): Therefore, and taking into account the presumption that life imprisonment itself does not contradict the Convention, these applications appear to be incompatible with the Convention Rationale Materia.
GR1 (Government): Along with that, the Court is not designed to review the legislation of the Member States in the abstract when the dispute provision does not actually infringe on any specific rights of the applicants, as in this case.
GR1 (Government): In other words, taking into account the Court's functions, it is not in its task to review the applicants' complaints in the abstract, since they have failed to clarify how exactly possible application of life imprisonment to minors, women, and elderly men would affect their personal situation.
GR1 (Government): Should the Court nevertheless decide to concede the present case on the merits, the Government would like to submit the following.
GR1 (Government): According to the Court's case law, a difference in treatment would be discriminatory in breach of Article 14 of the Convention unless it has objective and reasonable justification, namely if it pursues a legitimate aim or if there is a reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be released.
GR1 (Government): The Government believes that the above criteria have been fully met by the Russian legislators when they were formulating Article 57 of the Russian Criminal Code, which has essentially been contested by the applicants in abstract.
GR1 (Government): In particular, in deciding whether life imprisonment should be applied to various categories of criminals, one should bear in mind the following circumstances.
GR1 (Government): The Government emphasizes that non-application of life imprisonment to minors, women, and elderly men, which is based on very strong humanitarian grounds, does not exclude their criminal responsibility.
GR1 (Government): According to the Russian Criminal Code, persons falling within these groups may be sentenced to fixed terms of imprisonment.
GR1 (Government): The question is, however, whether the continued incarceration such as life imprisonment, should it be introduced, would be justified and would not violate the principle of humanism proclaimed by international law.
GR1 (Government): Let us now consider each category separately.
GR1 (Government): As regard minors, it should be noted that international instruments, in particular United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice, stress that status of children as particularly vulnerable should be their main consideration in all measures taken to deal with them under the penal law.
GR1 (Government): The juvenile justice system should treat children with special regard to their age and vulnerability at every stage of the process.
GR1 (Government): Their welfare and the best interest of the child should be a priority consideration when decisions are being made.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, children should not be deprived of their liberty unless there is absolutely no other option, and when they are put into custody, it should be for the shortest possible time.
GR1 (Government): Institutions for children should be educational and reformative rather than punitive.
GR1 (Government): The international human rights instruments require that juveniles should be dealt with in a system that is separate from that for adults, since children are unlikely to understand the process of the court of law and the meaning of the imposition of the punishment.
GR1 (Government): They are entitled to special protection because they are vulnerable, they are deemed to carry less personal responsibility for their actions, and they are required to be treated with rehabilitative measures rather than punishment.
GR1 (Government): When it comes to sentencing in compliance with the above international instruments, the Rational Criminal Court in section 6 of article 88 provides that punishment in the form of deprivation of liberty may be inflicted upon a minor for a term of 10 years at the most and shall be served in educational colonies.
GR1 (Government): What is more, out of 19 crimes for which the criminal court allows imposition of life imprisonment, even above 14 but below 16 can be prosecuted only under five of them.
GR1 (Government): Along with a number of documents of different United Nations bodies and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe calling for a complete abolition of life imprisonment for minors referred to by the government in their written submissions, it should be taken into account that in 2013 in the case of Mendoza and others versus Argentina, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that life imprisonment of minors in Argentina was unlawful and had to be prohibited.
GR1 (Government): Even third, life and sentence prisoners could apply for parole after 20 years.
GR1 (Government): The court ruled that life sentences by their nature did not comply with the purpose of social integration of children were disproportionate and provoked an extreme psychological impact on them, constituting cruel and inhuman treatment.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, the European Court in its case of Hawkins and Edwards versus United Kingdom established that imposition of a sentence that is severely disproportionate may constitute cruel treatment in breach of Article 3 of the Convention, and with children that would definitely be the case.
GR1 (Government): Thus international human rights instruments and regulations as well as international court's judgments recognize the necessity of a more humane treatment with respect to minors when imposing criminal punishments and thus the imposition of a life sentence on minors would constitute gross disregard of existing international norms.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, the government take notice of the fact that the Equal Rights Trust, which has been admitted as the third party in the present case, has also acknowledged that the exemption of children from a life sentence is considered appropriate and necessary under international human rights law.
GR1 (Government): As far as women are concerned, it is necessary to highlight that women constitute a minority in national prison population.
GR1 (Government): In most prison systems, the number varies from 2 to 9 percent of the total prison population, and they are present only 6.5 percent out of the total prison population of the world.
GR1 (Government): Along with that, females have significantly lower representation than males in serious crime categories.
GR1 (Government): It is clear from a variety of sources that females are less involved in serious offense categories, they commit less harm, and recidivism rates among them are quite low.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, it should not be overlooked that a significant number of women prisoners come from impoverished and marginalized parts of society.
GR1 (Government): They tend to have a background of physical and emotional abuse, mental health problems, and alcohol and drug dependency.
GR1 (Government): Women's imprisonment is closely related to poverty and discrimination, both as the reason for women's offenses and because women often cannot afford legal services or payment of fines or bail.
GR1 (Government): The government further noted that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires that all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human persons, and that the penitentiary system shall compromise the treatment of prisoners, the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.
GR1 (Government): As the United Nations Human Rights Committee has pointed out, this imposes on states a positive obligation towards persons who are particularly vulnerable because of their status as persons deprived of liberty, and complements for them the ban on torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
GR1 (Government): Prisoners may not be subjected to any hardship or constraint other than the resulting from the deprivation of liberty.
GR1 (Government): Respect for the dignity of such persons must be guaranteed under the same condition as for that of free persons.
GR1 (Government): These provisions are enforced by the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women states that the violence against women includes physical, sexual, or psychological violence perpetrated or tolerated by the state.
GR1 (Government): Specific standards that recognize the special needs and circumstances of female prisoners are also included in the body of principles for the protection of all persons under any form of detention or imprisonment adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
GR1 (Government): It is remarkable that these principles directly state that measures applied under the law and designed solely to protect the rights and special status of women shall not be deemed to be discriminatory.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe and the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime, in their Declaration on Women's Health in Prison, also pronounced that all policies affecting women in the criminal justice system must recognize the gender-specific needs of women and the significant variations in needs that can exist between different groups of women.
GR1 (Government): Besides, the European Parliament also, in its resolution of March 13, 2008, on the particular situation of women in prison and the impact of the imprisonment of parents on social and family life, considered that women prisoners belong to one of the vulnerable groups that have specific needs and requirements.
GR1 (Government): The resolution highlights in particular that the specific needs and circumstances of women in prison should be taken into account and that visible measures adapted to the specific needs of women should be put in place, including the application of alternative sentences.
GR1 (Government): It further notes that it is known today that a large number of women prisoners have been the victims of violence, sexual abuse, or mistreatment by their family or partner and suffered a state of deep economic and psychological dependence, which has directly contributed to their criminal record and brought physical and psychological consequences, such as post-traumatic stress.
GR1 (Government): Finally, as it was pointed out in one of the documents prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the concept of equality means much more than treating all persons in the same way.
GR1 (Government): Equal treatment of persons in unequal situations will operate to perpetrate rather than eradicate injustice.
GR1 (Government): Therefore international standards acknowledge particular vulnerability of women and necessity of their special treatment, and it would be extremely severe to apply to them such a strict punishment as life in prison.
GR1 (Government): The government considers that allowing the general link criteria is not the same as toleration of discrimination, but is the realization that some features of lives and natures of men and women may differ and ought to be acknowledged in sentencing.
GR1 (Government): With regard to elderly persons, the government knows that the recent studies have shown that world penal systems are struggling to cope with the rising number of older persons, prisoners.
GR1 (Government): For example, in the United States, the aging prison population has become a real problem and led to a crisis.
GR1 (Government): Therefore many advocacy groups as well as politicians have been concerned about rising health care and other costs in the prison system and even campaign for the release of elderly prisoners.