The government seeks to put an end to the prison business which has now become an industry worth billions of forints, the Justice Minister said on Thursday in Parliament.

In her address delivered in the general debate of the bill on damages awarded due to overcrowding in prisons, Judit Varga said, following the suspension with immediate effect of the payment of damages awarded due to prison conditions, based on the result of the national consultation, they will create a new legislative act which will put an end to the present unfair practice, and will place the primary emphasis on the interests of victims and their relatives.

As a result, they will guarantee the fulfilment of the rightful demands of victims more effectively and more promptly than at present, the Minister said.

She laid down that the government condemns the abuses which are related to the compensation lawsuits instituted due to poor prison conditions because, in her view, these seriously offend society’s general sense of justice.

As the government’s first measure, the Minister mentioned the bill which provides for the suspension of the payment of damages until 15 June, the adoption of the new legislation “in the interest of restoring the upset natural ratios between the compensation systems available to the victims of crimes and convicts”.

She also highlighted that as a second step the government is ready to create legal rules – as a result of the national consultation – which are based on society’s robust mandate and focus on the rights of victims.

Mrs Varga indicated that, in the interest of introducing such new legislation, the government is also ready to take on international debates.

She informed Parliament that in the past few years new prisons have been built, prison conditions have continuously improved, with an increase in the number of prison places overcrowding has decreased, and prisoners have been given work opportunities.

She stressed that instead of treating the symptoms, the government seeks to put an end altogether to overcrowding as grounds for damages.

The Minister said the bill provides that, in the interest of eliminating overcrowding, by 30 September, at the latest, measures will have to be taken to ensure that the average occupancy rates of law enforcement institutions should not exceed 100 per cent.

She also spoke about the part of the proposal which lays down, in the interest of avoiding abuses, that in the future, as a rule of thumb, the damages awarded will be paid to custody accounts managed by law enforcement institutions. No payments will be allowed to be made to the custody accounts of attorneys, she said.

She highlighted that for a long time compensation lawsuits instituted due to poor prison conditions were almost non-existent in the Hungarian legal system, and the number of such lawsuits was negligible even before the European Court of Human Rights.

Recently, however, “some organisations funded from abroad and well-known law firms that cooperate with them” have seen a money-making opportunity in connection with lawsuits brought in Strasbourg for damages.

She added that thanks to this, the number of lawsuits has increased dramatically.

She said in continuation that, assessing Hungarian cases, the Strasbourg court came to the conclusion in the Varga and others case that, due to the recurrence and permanent nature of problems arising from overcrowding in prisons and the large number of persons concerned, there is a need for an effective remedy procedure.

In this judgement, the court called upon Hungary to introduce a preventive and compensatory remedy mechanism, she recalled.

According to Mrs Varga, with the 2013 legislative act, the legislature’s original intention was to create an effective and well-functioning compensatory system to compensate for prison conditions that existed at the time.

She added that experiences of the past few years show that, in its current form, the compensatory system also affords scope for abuse.

The perpetrators of crimes which shocked the public have been able to obtain damages in the millions, while the claims of victims and their relatives are not enforced sufficiently effectively, she said.

According to the Justice Minister’s information, 12,680 decisions have been adopted in lawsuits instituted for damages due to poor prison conditions which have taken almost nine billion forints out of the central budget. Only 10 per cent of this sum has gone to victims, while 61 per cent of the damages awarded has been transferred to the custody accounts of attorneys.