APPENDIX Dnr O 7-2018 Page 5 (15) over time. It is therefore not possible to provide an exact number of association places at any one time. Remand prisons with relatively few places have flexible places that can be adapted based on which categories of inmates the remand prison receives. A cell can be a restriction place one day and an association place the next. In order to obtain information on how many clients are in association or de facto segregated, the agency must make a manual review every given day. The information requested by the Parliamentary Ombudsmen required such a manual collection of data, which the agency had not done before the meeting. The Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman pointed out that there is no minimum time for association in remand prison and asked what association actually means, in the Prison and Probation Service's opinion, when an inmate is placed in an association place. According to the representatives of the Prison and Probation Service, inmates placed in association places are taken out in groups for association for a specific amount of time of the day. Unlike the case in an association department, inmates in association places are not released in the morning for association until being locked up in the evening. The Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman stated that the Prison and Probation Service's way of using the concepts of association department and association place means that the work performed with these issues becomes unclear to an external investigator. What is described as association places is more similar to isolation-breaking measures as it consists of spending a certain amount of time in a group per day. The representatives of the Prison and Probation Service agreed with the Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman's description and stated that this is not how association is intended to function. The premise in the correctional regime is that inmates should be given the opportunity to associate during the day and the term ‘association’ means spending time with more than one inmate, that is to say in the plural (chap. 2 § 5 of the Remand Prisons Act [2010: 611]). This presupposes that an association department has at least three places. However, there is an ongoing discussion within the agency regarding the purpose of the provision. It may be that the provision aims to give an inmate the possibility to spend time with another person. In such a case, there should be no major difference between having contact with only one inmate or with two. Today, two inmates co-sitting is an isolation-breaking measure. In the future, one could imagine a position whereby association means two inmates spending time together in a cell. The Prison and Probation Service has not progressed so far in its discussions to take into account the international regulations nor the recommendations from international bodies on the issue. The agency has also not made any request to the Ministry of Justice for guidance on the matter. – 71 – B