6 REPORT FROM THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR CRIME PRE VENTION 6 Report from the National Council for Crime Prevention In 2015, the National Council for Crime Prevention was commissioned by the government to provide an overview of the situation in Swedish remand prisons. The assignment also included proposing measures to make remand prison more humane. 6.1 The National Council for Crime Prevention’s findings in brief In a report1 from January 2017, the National Council for Crime Prevention stated, inter alia, that the number of people held in remand prisons had decreased gradually, from just over 11,200 people in 2010 to just over 9,000 people in 2015. The report states that in cases where a prosecutor had received permission from a court to impose restrictions, in most cases the individual on remand had restrictions imposed for most of the period spent in remand prison (three quarters of the time). For children with restrictions, the restrictions lasted for 90 per cent of the remand prison period. Inmates seldom exercised their right to have a court review the application of individual restrictions (chap. 6 § 4 HäL). Furthermore, prosecutors rarely reviewed and removed restrictions. This was due to a perception that the danger of collusion, which was the basis for the decision to initially hold an individual on remand, often remained throughout the period of investigation. In the opinion of the National Council for Crime Prevention, this indicated that the Prosecution Authority’s guidelines (RåR 2015:1) had no 1 See Reducing isolation in remand prisons – Situation and proposals (Report 2017:6). effect on the proportion of inmates who receive restrictions. In the opinion of the National Council for Crime Prevention, the Prison and Probation Service’s suveys show that in 2015 the agency was far from reaching its objective of at least two hours of isolation-breaking measures every day. Only 25 per cent of individuals with restrictions received isolation-breaking measures for such an amount of time. The most common isolation-breaking measures did not involve any human contact, for example inmates spend Almost nine out of ten time alone in an exerciindividuals held on se yard. The proportion who received measures remand with restrictions that involved contact had been held in with others for at least conditions amounting two hours per day was even lower. The Prison to solitary confinement and Probation Service in 2015 reached its objective in relation to only 12 per cent of those held on remand with restrictions. This means, according to the National Council for Crime Prevention, that almost nine out of ten inmates with restrictions were isolated on any given day. In the report, the National Council for Crime Prevention identifies a number of obstacles to a “humane, efficient and safe remand prison operation”. One obstacle is that it is unclear whether it is the Prison and Probation Service or the prosecutor who has the main responsibility – 34 –