Council of Europe’s Committee for the prevention of torture (CPT): annual report of 2025
The Council of Europe’s Committee for the prevention of torture has published its annual report of 2025. In 2025, the CPT carried out 22 visits in 20 countries. Specifically it visited 182 places of detention, including 74 prisons, 69 police stations, 17 psychiatric hospitals, 11 immigration detention centres and ten social care institutions. The report, while acknowledging progress in certain areas in recent years, highlights worrying signs on the treatment and living conditions of detained individuals in Europe.
The issues highlighted include the re-emergence of ill-treatment in certain countries, a problem of impunity of police ill-treatment and prison overcrowding, consequently calling on governments to improve conditions in prisons and to take further action to prevent police ill-treatment.
The CPT specifically underlines overcrowding as a risk becoming normalized in various prisons across Europe, following a significant increase in the prison population since the Covid-19 pandemic, affecting, in particular, individuals in pre-trial detention. Overcrowding not only undermines the functioning of prisons and potentially exposes individuals to inhuman and degrading treatment, but it also favours criminal activities within the prison, corrodes staff-prison relations and increases the risk of violence, tension and deterioration of mental health for both prisoners and staff.
The committee also expresses concern over pre-trial and high-security regimes’ living conditions. Indeed, in several countries, remand prisoners are often confined to their cells for more than 22 hours a day. While recognising the challenges posed by organised crime groups and the need for specific organization within the detention center, the Committee needs to ensure appropriate safeguards and oversight to prevent high security regimes from adopting solitary confinement and excessive restrictions as appropriate measures.
Furthermore, with regards to ill-treatment by officers, the CPT has witnessed an improvement, with the number of allegations of physical ill-treatment by police officers decreasing, in particular during the interviews of criminal subjects. However, ill-treatment now occurs mostly at the time of arrest and during informal questioning.
During its visits to immigration detention centres, the CPT continued to identify serious shortcomings, including overcrowding, unsuitable premises and poor material conditions. Specifically, the report expresses serious concern about the treatment of migrants in vulnerable situations, such as children and mothers with infants, for whom alternatives to detention should be found.
In its monitoring of mental-health establishments the CPT has observed many good practices. However, significant challenges remain, often linked to a shortage of healthcare staff, including issues such as consent to treatment and the use of practices such as seclusion and mechanical or chemical restraint.
CPT President Alan Mitchell has stated: “While the CPT has observed many good practices during its visits to places of detention, important gaps persist. Ill-treatment has re-emerged in places where there had been progress in combating it. The effectiveness of some oversight mechanisms has diminished, and a sense of impunity of abusive actions pervades. In some states, loss of institutional control in prisons combined with strained infrastructure is creating conditions leading to weaker safeguards, and the risk that harmful practices resurface. [...] Overcrowding, as well as insufficient staffing and lack of appropriate staff training, are undermining the proper operation of prisons as well as the reintegration of prisoners to the community”.
He further added that “Governments should show political will and take resolute measures to eradicate prison overcrowding and ensure respect for the human dignity of individuals in detention, including appropriate regime, care and living conditions”.