The current issues of Hungarian prison policy

The current state of Hungarian prisons could be best characterised by the constant increase in detainee population as well as by one of the potential consequences of increasing prison population namely the overcrowding of Hungarian penitentiary institutions. Also for Hungary overcrowding as a Europe-wide phenomenon arises as the most acute source of concern and inevitably effects the image of law enforcement. It is not surprising that in its decision published in 10th March 2015 the European Court of Human Rights ordered Hungary to eliminate the structural problems in its law enforcement system. The Strasbourg Court concluded that due to overcrowding violations of rights occur in the country on a systemic level and the resolution of which violations require partly general partly individual measures. In view of the above the present book attempts to present the scale of overcrowding in Hungarian penitentiary institutions reveal the reasons for overcrowding as well as to propose solutions to remedy the problem.