2.
Korydallos Psychiatric Hospital for Prisoners
a.
preliminary remarks
15.
The Korydallos Psychiatric Hospital for Prisoners (the Hospital) is part of the Korydallos
Prison Judicial Complex (Men’s Prison, Women’s Remand Prison, Special Health Centre and
Psychiatric Hospital) and was constructed in the early 1970s. The Hospital is a four-floor building
according to the management, the more seriously ill patients were being accommodated on the first
and second floors, while the workers and less unwell patients are accommodated on the third floor.
The administration, healthcare service, admission and a separation cellular unit are on the ground
floor. There are also several recently renovated cells in the basement,5 which were not in service at
the time of the visit. The CPT would like to be informed about the proposed use of the basement
cells.
16.
According to Section 13 of Law 3772/2009, responsibility for the Hospital should have been
transferred to the Ministry of Health. Indeed, by letter of 7 June 2018, the Greek authorities informed
the CPT that responsibility for medical services at the Hospital would be transferred to the Ministry
of Health by September 2018, pursuant to a Presidential Decree outlining a range of measures
foreseen for the management of the Hospital. However, this has not yet occurred, and the hospital
is currently under the responsibility of the Ministry of Citizen Protection.
To all intents and purposes, the Hospital is a prison both in its design and functioning. The Prison
Law of 1999 as amended by Law no. 4895/2022 of 28 October 2022 applies equally to the Hospital
and all the patients it accommodates. There are no specific rules or protocols for the regulation and
management of the Hospital.
The CPT recommends that the Greek authorities move forward with the transfer of the
responsibility for the Hospital to the Ministry of Health. As part of the preparations for the
transfer, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Citizen Protection should work together to
draw up specific plans for the management of the Hospital and the treatment of the patients.
17.
The Hospital remains the only establishment in Greece both for the placement of persons on
remand and sentenced prisoners who have a mental disorder. In the course of 2021, there were 522
admissions and 489 discharges, almost all of them back to a prison establishment. The official
capacity for the hospital cited in the Ministry of Citizen Protection statistics is 261, whereas according
to the management of the Hospital the capacity remained at 160. At the time of the visit, the Hospital
was accommodating 194 persons, of whom 170 were patients and 24 were prisoners classified as
workers, who had been transferred from other prison establishments to work in the Hospital. Contrary
to the situation found in 2018, there were no indications that the workers had managed to arrange a
transfer to the Hospital to benefit from the better conditions and greater reduction in their prison
sentences as compared to other prisons.
In the period since July 2022, a process of refurbishment and renovation of the dormitories and cells
had been initiated and, at the time of the visit, half of the first-floor accommodation was not in use.
Once the renovations are completed, the official capacity of the Hospital should be reviewed to
ensure that all accommodation in which patients are placed is in line with the national minimum
standard of living space per patient in a mental healthcare institution.6 The accommodation for the
prison workers should conform with the relevant prison regulations.
The CPT recommends that the Greek authorities recalculate the official capacity of
Korydallos Prison Psychiatric Hospital for both patients and workers in line with the relevant
mental healthcare and prison regulations (see also paragraph 22 below).
5. The
“blue” isolation cells criticised by the CPT in 2018 had been taken out of service.
It should be noted that the symptoms of patients with a mental disorder can become more severe due to
overcrowding and the subsequent overload of stimuli induced by it.
6.
7