issued by the Registrar of the Court  
ECHR 004 (2019)  
10.01.2019  
Prison sentence law which prevented male inmate from attending  
father’s funeral led to sexual discrimination  
In today’s Chamber judgment1 in the case of Ēcis v. Latvia (application no. 12879/09) the European  
Court of Human Rights held, by five votes to two, that there had been:  
a violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) in conjunction with Article 8 (right to  
respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.  
The case concerned a male prison inmate who complained that he had not been allowed to attend  
his father’s funeral under a law regulating prison regimes which discriminated in favour of women.  
The Court found that men and women who had committed a serious crime and had received the  
same sentence were treated differently. Men were automatically placed in the highest security  
category and held in closed prisons, while women went to less restrictive partly closed prisons.  
The law meant that the applicant had been automatically banned from attending the funeral, while a  
woman would have had such a possibility. There had been no individual assessment of the  
proportionality of such a prohibition and he had suffered discrimination which was in violation of the  
Convention.  
Principal facts  
The applicant, Mārtiņš Ēcis, is a Latvian national who was born in 1981 and lives in the Ventspils  
district (Latvia).  
Mr Ēcis was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for kidnapping, and aggravated murder and  
extortion in 2001. Under the applicable legislation, he began his sentence in 2002 as a maximum  
security inmate in a closed prison. He later progressed to the medium security category in the same  
facility.  
In 2008 Mr Ēcis complained to the authorities that male and female prisoners who had been  
convicted of the same crimes and given the same term of imprisonment were treated differently  
when serving their sentences. In particular, women were initially placed in partly closed prisons  
rather than closed prisons, allowing them to more rapidly obtain certain privileges, such as leave.  
The Justice Ministry dismissed his complaint, referring to the Sentence Enforcement Code and the  
fact that the legislature had decided that men and women should be treated differently when it  
came to the execution of prison sentences. There was no discrimination as both sexes’ rights were  
restricted and both were deprived of their liberty.  
Mr Ēcis lodged three complaints with the Constitutional Court in 2008 about alleged discrimination  
against male prison inmates as under the law women who had committed the same type of crime  
and were serving the same sentence had more lenient conditions.  
1. Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month period following its delivery,  
any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges  
considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final  
judgment. If the referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.  
Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of its execution.  
Further information about the execution process can be found here: www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution.  
The Constitutional Court declined to institute proceedings for any of the complaints on the grounds  
of insufficient legal reasoning. Among other things, it found that Mr Ēcis had failed to specify why  
the difference in the legal treatment of men and women should not be allowed and why male and  
female prisoners convicted of the same crimes were in comparable situations.  
His third Constitutional Court complaint, in October 2008, included the fact he had not been allowed  
to attend his father’s funeral, whereas a woman prisoner in the same situation would have been.  
Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court  
The applicant complained that men and women convicted of the same crime were treated  
differently when it came to the prison regime applied to them, in particular with regard to the right  
to prison leave, which meant he had not been able to attend his father’s funeral. He relied on Article  
14 (prohibition of discrimination), in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private and  
family life), Article 5 (right to liberty and security) and Article 10 (freedom of expression).  
The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 12 December 2008.  
Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:  
Angelika Nußberger (Germany), President,  
Yonko Grozev (Bulgaria),  
André Potocki (France),  
Síofra O’Leary (Ireland),  
Mārtiņš Mits (Latvia),  
Gabriele Kucsko-Stadlmayer (Austria),  
Lado Chanturia (Georgia),  
and also Milan Blaško, Deputy Section Registrar  
Decision of the Court  
The Court decided to deal with the case under Article 14 in conjunction with Article 8. It also  
dismissed a preliminary objection by the Government that the applicant had failed to exhaust  
domestic remedies. In particular, when rejecting Mr Ēcis’s third case, the Constitutional Court had,  
at least in part, expressed its position on the substance of his complaint.  
On the merits, the Court observed that it had consistently held that Article 14 could apply if people  
in an analogous or relevantly similar situation had been treated differently. Such was Mr Ēcis’s case,  
which concerned men and women who had been convicted of serious or especially serious crimes,  
the application of prison regimes and their impact on prisoners’ family life.  
Not all differences in treatment violated Article 14, but there had to be a legitimate aim, and the  
means employed had to be in proportion to the aim.  
The Government had argued that treating men and women differently in prison was justified by the  
fact that female prisoners had distinctive needs. The Court accepted that argument in part,  
particularly when it came to maternity. Nevertheless, any measures still had to be proportional.  
The Court noted that under the Sentence Enforcement Code Mr Ēcis had not been allowed to attend  
his father’s funeral because he was a medium-security prisoner in a closed prison. No other  
considerations had been taken into account when the authorities had refused him leave. However, a  
woman convicted of the same crimes would automatically be placed in a partly closed prison and,  
having served the same amount of sentence and progressed to the same security level, would be  
eligible for leave.  
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The Government had argued that women inmates were less violent, but had not backed up that  
argument with specific data. In any case, the Court could not accept that all male prisoners were so  
much more dangerous that individual risk assessments were not needed.  
Furthermore, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) had criticised Latvia’s system of  
setting pre-determined minimum periods under various prison security regimes, stating that it was  
up to prison authorities to decide on such arrangements, based on agreed criteria and individual  
assessments of inmates.  
The Court shared the Government’s view that women prisoners should not face prison conditions  
that were harsher than necessary, but the same was also true of men. While Article 8 did not  
guarantee leave from prison to attend a funeral, the domestic authorities still had to assess such  
requests on their merits. In addition, European prison policy increasingly emphasised rehabilitation,  
with family ties being important in aiding the reintegration of both sexes.  
The Court concluded that while some differences in treatment could be justified, a blanket ban on  
males leaving prison, even to attend a funeral, did not help the goal of meeting the particular needs  
of female detainees. The refusal to assess Mr Ēcis’s request to attend the funeral owing to a prison  
regime which was based on his sex had had no objective and reasonable justification and he had  
therefore suffered discrimination and a violation of his Convention rights.  
Just satisfaction (Article 41)  
The Court held by five votes to two that Latvia was to pay the applicant 3,000 euros (EUR) in respect  
of non-pecuniary damage.  
Separate opinions  
Judges Grozev and O’Leary expressed a joint dissenting opinion which is annexed to the judgment.  
The judgment is available only in English.  
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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member  
States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.  
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