Mortality of persons deprived of liberty in the penal system

Abstract

The main aim of this research is to determine the scope, dynamics, and structure of deaths of persons deprived of their liberty who resided in the penal system due to custody, security measures, serving a prison sentence or an alternative sanction, with regard to their demographic, criminological, penal, and psychological characteristics. Article 111, paragraph b of the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty (1990) determines that deprivation of liberty refers to any kind of detention, imprisonment, i.e. placement in a public or private institution which the imprisoned person cannot leave, by order of judicial, administrative or other public authority. The data used included information on persons deprived of their liberty who died in the territory of the Republic of Serbia in the period from 2008 to 2012. The data was obtained from The Directorate for Execution of Criminal Sanctions of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia. In the past, researches mainly focused on violence in prisons, death penalty, prison riots, auto-aggressive behavior, i.e. certain forms of mortality such as a suicide. This paper aims to point out the characteristics of deaths which occur while persons deprived of their liberty are under the authority of judicial institutions, both before and after passing a criminal sanction.

Keywords

• violence
• death
• persons deprived of their liberty
• penal system