In the case of Gullotti v. Italy the Court of Human Rights held that there had been a violation of the right to respect for correspondence.

The case concerned a prisoner serving a sentence for mafia-type offences and his complaint about the renewal of restrictions on the people with whom he had been allowed to correspond. He is imprisoned under a special regime introduced to sever contact between detainees and their criminal networks.

The relevant law provided that limitations on prisoners’ correspondence had to be reasoned and time-limited. However, there had been no explicit and autonomous assessment of the need to limit the applicant’s correspondence to only relatives admitted for family visits and there had therefore been insufficient evidence for the renewal of the restriction on his rights.

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