Overcrowding in prisons, as well as understaffing and difficulties in attracting new staff, remain major challenges faced by the Slovenian penitentiary system, despite the authorities' efforts to address them, says the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) in a new report on its visit to Slovenia in October 2024. The CPT delegation went to Koper and Ljubljana Prisons, as well as to the Lukavci Special Social Welfare Establishment.
Since the previous visit in 2017 when the CPT noted positively the slight decrease in prison population, the situation has changed significantly. There has been a sharp increase in the number of prisoners, while the capacity of the prison estate has remained largely unchanged. For instance, in Ljubljana prison, the living space provided per person clearly fell short of the CPT's minimum standard of 4 m2 per prisoner.
The main reason for the dramatic increase cited by virtually all interlocutors was the surge in the number of persons, the majority of whom were foreign nationals accused of or sentenced for smuggling of migrants. As a result, more than half of the persons held in the Slovenian prison system at the time of the 2024 visit were foreign nationals, 80% of whom were incarcerated in connection with the smuggling of migrants. The prison overcrowding not only adversely affected living conditions, but also negatively impacted many other areas of life in prison, including inter-prisoner relations and material conditions.
The problem of overcrowding was exacerbated by another major challenge faced by the Slovenian prison system, namely understaffing and the difficulties in attracting new staff. At the time of the visit, 10% of prison officers posts were vacant. Understaffing and difficulties to retain and attract new staff were considered by the management as one of the biggest challenges, and, according to the CPT, threatened to undermine the care afforded to residents.
