and failed to address the majority of the Committee’s recommendations, usually merely quoting the existing legislation and/or explaining the lack of action by referring to budgetary constraints. Further, most of the information contained in the CPT’s report as concerns ill-treatment and inter-prisoner violence was simply dismissed. The alleged ill-treatment generally consisted of slaps, kicks, and in some cases truncheon blows. The delegation concluded that men and women (including juveniles) in the custody of the police continued to run a significant risk of being ill-treated, both at the time of apprehension and during subsequent questioning. The 2015 visit was therefore an opportunity for the Committee to assess the progress in the implementation of its long-standing recommendations and to review, in particular, the treatment and detention conditions of persons held at Sofia, Burgas and Varna Prisons, as well as at Sofia IDF (located on G.M. Dimitrov Boulevard).21 6. Very little progress, if any, has been made as regards the legal safeguards against police ill-treatment, and the CPT’s key recommendations in this sphere are still to be implemented. In particular, access to a lawyer remained an exception during the initial 24 hours of police custody and the ex officio lawyers did not perform their function as a safeguard against ill-treatment. Further, persons in police custody were still rarely put in a position to notify promptly a person of their choice of their detention, and were not systematically informed of their rights from the outset of their custody. Regrettably, the findings made during the aforementioned visit demonstrate that little or no progress has been achieved in the implementation of key recommendations repeatedly made by the CPT.22 For these reasons, the Committee has been left with no other choice but to make a public statement, pursuant to Article 10, paragraph 2, of the Convention; it took this decision at its 86th plenary meeting in March 2015. Police ill-treatment 5. In the course of the 2015 visit, the Committee’s delegation received a significant number of allegations of deliberate physical ill-treatment of persons detained by the police; the number of such allegations had not decreased since the 2014 visit but was even on the rise in Sofia and Burgas. 21. All these establishments have been visited regularly by the CPT since 1995. 22. These findings are summarised below, in paragraphs 5 to 16. 7. The Committee has long stressed the crucial role played by health-care staff and more particularly medical doctors in the prevention of ill-treatment. The findings of the CPT’s delegation during the 2015 visit demonstrate that the existing specific rules as regards medical confidentiality and the recording of injuries continue to be routinely ignored in practice. Injuries observed on persons admitted to IDFs were usually not recorded in the medical documentation. Medical screening prior to the admission of detained persons to IDFs was extremely cursory (consisting merely of an interview, without a proper medical examination) and it was performed in the presence of police officers, with detainees usually being handcuffed. Appendices ► Page 71