On 5 and 6 February 2025, Deputy Ombudsman Ivan Šelih, head of the National Preventive Mechanism in Slovenia (DPM), attended a workshop in Strasbourg, France, entitled Tackling overcrowding in European prisons: strengthening NPMs' role in safeguarding rights and ensuring effective oversight.

The aim of the workshop was to strengthen the effectiveness of NPMs to improve supervision, advocate systemic reforms, and ensure compliance with international and Council of Europe standards, including the revised European Prison Rules and CPT recommendations. It was organised by the Council of Europe as part of the European NPM Forum and was attended by more than 80 participants representing European NPMs, criminal justice experts, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

The event participants agreed that prison overcrowding remains a significant human rights challenge across Europe, undermining the dignity and well-being of imprisoned persons and seriously hampering the effective work of NPMs. It is the main cause of poor prison conditions worldwide and probably the most pressing challenge facing prison systems.

Deputy Ombudsman Šelih pointed out in the discussion that the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Republic of Slovenia (Ombudsman) has also been experiencing increasing overcrowding in recent years when dealing with the complaints of imprisoned persons and during visits to Prison Service Institutions (ZPKZ) and their departments in the role of NPM. Overcrowding, in addition to the growing shortage of prison officers, also has a significant impact on the length of criminal proceedings (for example due to the cancellation of escorts) and consequently on the duration and occupation of detention, as well as on the security and living conditions of convicts. The consequences of overcrowding in the prison system are also manifested in other ways. They can affect the maintenance of order and discipline, the treatment of incarcerated persons, the exercise of their rights, etc., all of which can lead to humiliating and inhuman conditions for incarcerated persons on the one hand, and to inadequate working conditions and burdens for employees on the other.

Therefore, it is imperative that the competent state authorities ensure that everyone who is deprived of their liberty is guaranteed humane treatment and respect for their dignity, and that the deprivation of liberty is a measure of last resort, which should be determined and used only when, due to the gravity of the crime, a different sanction would be clearly inappropriate. In order to improve the situation, structural changes are also necessary to prevent further disproportionate growth in the number of imprisoned persons, including greater use of so-called alternative criminal sanctions, and the worst and also the most expensive way for the state to solve the problem of overcrowding is the construction of new institutions for serving prison sentences with the aim of increasing the capacity to house imprisoned persons, the head of the NPM in Slovenia, Deputy Ombudsman Ivan Šelih, emphasised.