Civil liability of penitentiary and psychiatric or mental health centers for damages caused by their internals

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to study the civil liability of penitentiary and psychiatric or mental health centers when a convict or a patient causes damage for which the victim who suffers it must be compensated. The fact that the author of the damage is an internal of a penitentiary or psychiatric center has special relevance to determine the civil liability of the center in question, since the center occupies a position of guarantor, considering the omission or insufficient adoption of security measures imputation criteria. This is how the recent judgment of the Supreme Court of March 12, 2021 estimates it, in which also refers to the theory of risk creation, We will analyze in the following pages the legal arguments in which to justify the civl liability of penitentiary and psychiatric centers in cases their internals cause a damage. When we study the civil liability of penitentiary centers, we will focus on the event in which the damage is caused by an internal to another internal on the occasion of the commission  of a crime. When dealing with the civil liability of the owner of a psychiatric or mental health center, we will focus on the event in which the damage is caused by a patient to third parties, also as a consequence of the commission of a crime.