Adalah: Cancel bill authorizing Israel’s public security minister to ban visits by family members and lawyers to prisoners

Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel sent a letter on 14 June 2020 to the Israeli attorney general, the justice and public security ministers, and to Knesset members of the committees of internal affairs and environment, seeking the withdrawal of a bill that would ban visits by family members and lawyers to prisoners being held by Israel.

The bill currently being considered by the Israeli Knesset would enshrine emergency regulations – “Prevention of visitors and attorneys’ entry into detention centers, police stations and prisons, military prisons and prisons (Temporary Order), 2020” – into law for one year.[1]

The bill authorizes Israel’s public security minister to ban visits by family members and lawyers to these facilities to prevent the spread of COVID-19, after receiving an opinion from the Health Ministry, and on the recommendation of Israel’s prison commissioner or inspector general, and in consultation with the justice minister.

Adalah calls for the bill to be rejected on the grounds that it disproportionately violates the fundamental constitutional rights of prisoners and detainees to consult with their lawyers, as derived from the right to personal liberty.[2] The importance of the right to counsel is a key to guaranteeing other constitutional rights such as: the right to access the court, the right to body integrity, the right to receive medical treatment, the right to human dignity and the like.

Attorneys’ visits are also of great importance in the context of torture prevention and inhumane treatment. In light of the COVID-19 crisis, the visit of a lawyer serves as the first external evaluation of what has been done, including the treatment of the disease in prisons.

The bill gives the commissioner sweeping authority to determine conditions and arrangements for entry to detention facilities, without clear criteria or concrete standards for its operation. Such regulation should be grounded in legislation and not discretionary.  Further, a provision which provides for a telephone call between a prisoner and his/her attorney, as an alternative, is insufficient and infringes on the right to counsel. The bill also amounts to a violation of prisoners’ constitutional rights to due process and to access the courts.  

While the alternatives to meeting with a lawyer adopted by the bill stem from the interest in maintaining public health, including that of the detainees and prisoners, in view of the danger posed by the COVID-19 virus, the spread of the virus does not prevent the entry and exit of staff in the prison service. The measure is disproportionate and the purpose is improper, namely to save costs for the Israel Prison Service of coordinating meetings between prisoners and their lawyers. These face-to-face meetings could take place with a lawyer’s health statement or health test, and social distancing can be maintained.