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A prison breached a prisoner’s rights when it intercepted correspondence with his doctor. That was the decision of the European Court of Human Rights recently, in a case the domestic courts had dismissed. (Szuluk v United Kingdom, Application no 36936/05, Decision published 17 June 2009)
The prisoner, Mr Szuluk, is serving a 14-year prison sentence for drugs offences. While awaiting trial, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and began receiving treatment from a neuro-radiologist. It was his correspondence with that doctor that, following his conviction, was monitored by a prison medical officer.
The government admitted the letters had been read, but it claimed that was perfectly lawful. The Strasbourg court disagreed. It held that the prison had acted disproportionately: there was nothing to suggest that Mr Szuluk had or would ever abuse medical confidentiality, and there was no reason to question his doctor’s good faith. Ordinarily, a prisoner’s correspondence with his doctor should have no less protection than that with his lawyer or his MP. Mr Szuluk was awarded damages of 1,000 euros and costs of 6,000 euros.
Mr Szuluk will like this decision, as will many prisoners and those that support them. It shouldn’t, however, make us complacent: the correspondence of those detained is nowhere near as secure as we might hope.
My own experience is of the law relating to mental health patients. For them, the Mental Health Act dictates when their letters can be intercepted and gives them some redress when it is read. But those safeguards are illusory. I have been involved in several cases where the correspondence of detained patients was seized by the police as part of a criminal investigation. In one case – a high-profile murder – the hospital had the nerve, and the resources, to challenge the police in the High Court. It lost. The decision has never been reported, but the court said that the Mental Health Act protections were only part of the picture, and that a patient’s right to privacy might be outweighed by the needs of a criminal investigation. I saw what the patient wrote and all I can remember is that, time-after-time, he asked about the welfare of his dog. The letters didn’t figure in his trial.
