THE PARLIAMENTARY OMBUDSMEN’S SPECIAL C ASE RE VIE W ON THE ISOLATION OF INMATES IN REMAND PRISON lation-breaking measures. This entails a risk of serious consequences for those who are placed in the Prison and Probation Service’s remand prisons. The international investigations of the Swedish remand prison system have primarily been aimed at that highlighting the wiIt is very serious that the despread use of resPrison and Probation trictions and the risks Service has not progressed involved therein. The Chief Parliamentary further in its work with Ombudsman emphabreaking isolation sises that her review of the surveys of both categories – inmates without restrictions and inmates with restrictions – shows that the problem of isolation in remand prisons is not limited to those inmates that the Prison and Probation Service has the legal support to deny association rights. The lack of, inter alia, adequate premises means that isolation is something that also affects other inmates held in remand prisons. With an appropriately structured operation, this unacceptable situation would not arise. In her decision, the Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman emphasises the Prison and Probation Service is responsible for planning and implementing remand orders from a court to ensure that the negative consequences of being deprived of one’s liberty are counteracted (chap. 1 § 5 of the Remand Prisons Act). This includes a farreaching responsibility to ensure that, for example, there are sufficient levels of staffing who can work with isolation-breaking measures and thus prevent inmates being isolated. The Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman is very critical of the fact that the Prison and Probation Service has not progressed further in its work. 9 The Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman fears that the measures that the Prison and Probation Service can and must take will not be sufficient in solving the problem of the high degree of isolation that currently prevails in the agency’s remand prison system. The Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman also emphasises that the Prison and Probation Service, at the dialogue meeting in March 2019, stated that the agency unfortunately believes that the amount of time inmates receive isolation-breaking measures will not increase more than marginally, despite the fact that Sweden has a relatively high level of staffing when compared internationally. The CPT and the Remand Prison and Restrictions Government Inquiry have both deemed the need for a comprehensive change to the remand prison system. The details, which have emerged from the Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman’s review, speak strongly in her opinion of the need for the government to now take a firm grip of these issues. 9.3 The ability to follow the work on the use of isolation-breaking measures Section 8.2 details how remand prisons have yet to define, measure and follow up on isolation-breaking measures in a standardised manner. This issue was raised partly in a request for reporting back, and partly at the dialogue meeting in March 2019. In the reporting back, the Prison and Probation Service stated that a prestudy has been carried out to develop a standardised planning and follow-up tool that clearly supports the local operational isolation-breaking work, whilst at the national level provides a correct compilation of information. As the project is complex, in June 2018 the agency could not state if and when in the future – 61 –