Solitary confinement in prison
Recommended measures (8)
The State party should implement effectively the revised guidelines enacted by the Government in March 2017 that lay down detailed criteria on the use of solitary confinement and ensure that issues relating to infrastructure and staffing are not used as grounds for exclusion.
The State party should reduce the use of solitary confinement to situations that are strictly necessary and amend the legislative framework in order to limit the use of such confinement to exceptional circumstances.
The State party should ensure that persons subjected to solitary confinement are attended to by medical staff on a daily basis, that their isolation is discontinued if it is found to adversely affect their health, that they enjoy procedural safeguards, and have the right to file complaints and to submit their cases for judicial review.
The State party should evaluate and assess the effects of the practice of isolation or full exclusion on the mental and physical health of prisoners in order to reduce them and use alternative and less intrusive measures whenever possible.
The State party should ensure that de facto isolation of prisoners that is similar to solitary confinement, such as full exclusion, is based on policy, law and guidelines, and set a maximum number of days a prisoner can remain in full exclusion.
The State party should provide prisoners with information about their legal rights and extend the deadline for the administrative appeals of prisoners regarding their exclusion or solitary confinement beyond the current 48 hours.
The State party should review the existing mechanisms of control and legal remedies, provide detailed statistics on the use of isolation and full exclusion from human contact, provide them to the Committee and make them public.
The State party should exempt from and not apply the administration ABE-reform, which has imposed annual budget cuts for all government entities since 2014 as a measure to contribute to the Government’s reforms to reduce bureaucratization and increase efficiency, in all places in which persons are deprived of their liberty in order that insufficient building capacities and conditions and insufficient staff do not jeopardize the health and lives of persons deprived of their liberty.