Your right to communicate with the outside world may only be restricted if specifically allowed by law and if there are security threats or other well-grounded reasons in your particular situation. Your right to communicate may be limited by either monitoring your correspondence or by restricting it.
Monitoring
Your letters or conversations may only be monitored or recorded for security reasons - this monitoring should be used only as an exceptional measure and where your individual circumstances require it. There are several ways that your letters can be monitored, starting from reading them to retaining them. Even if there are security concerns, the prison administration must choose the less restrictive form of monitoring that is effective for your situation.
Your communication with state institutions, the ombudsman or the courts should not be monitored. Only in exceptional circumstances, when the prison administration has a good reason to believe that this right is being abused, can they check that correspondence. Read more about privileged correspondence.
Indiscriminate monitoring is not allowed by human rights. In order to justify the monitoring of correspondence, the prison administration must have real and well-grounded reasons for suspecting that some illegal activities may be under discussion or being planned in the correspondence. A decision must be issued by the administration in this case.
Restrictions
The prison administration may restrict means of communication but only for security reasons or as a disciplinary measure. However, those restrictions should only be for a limited time and they cannot ban all of your communication with the outside world. In such cases, a separate written decision explaining the reasons, the length and the opportunity to appeal such a restriction must also be issued.
In certain situations, if you are prohibited from sending a letter or making a call, without a valid reason, this may violate your right to a private and family life or, where you cannot reach your lawyer due to this, the right to a fair trial.
Even if the restriction on communication is lawful and well-reasoned, your rights may still be violated if the restrictions are not proportional to your situation. To assess whether there has been a violation, various factors have to be taken into account, such as:
- the length of the prohibition
- whether there was an emergency that required to contact with people outside the prison
- whether there were other appropriate ways of contacting the outside world, etc.
How to complain
If your correspondence is being monitored or restricted without an adequate reason, it may violate your freedom of correspondence and your right to a private and family life.
If you believe that your correspondence is being monitored without any individual assessment or valid reason, or the restrictions are too severe for your situation, you should complain about this to the prison administration, and subsequently, the Court. Read more about how to complain.
If the aforementioned proceedings have been unsuccessful, you will later be able to complain about a potential violation of your rights in other national or international human rights institutions.