VISITS BY THE JOINT COMMISSION their working conditions reflect any appreciation of the work they put in. It is obvious that this also has an impact on the working atmosphere and, ultimately, on how those taken into custody are treated. The sanitary facilities in Mannheim East Police Station in particular should therefore be repaired as soon as possible. Response: The competent Office for Assets and Construction Management in Mannheim has been notified of the structural defects in Mannheim East Police Station. The measures necessary will be carried out as the building authorities’ budget permits. Some of the detention rooms in Mannheim East Police Station do not have integrated sanitation. Detainees can communicate with the duty officer via an intercom and ask to be taken to a toilet. However, given the strong smell of urine in one of these detention rooms, some detainees must be relieving themselves on the floor. Toilets should be installed in all the detention rooms. Response: The toilets in the custody suite will be repaired. Priority is being attached to installing toilets in the detention rooms. Those which are soiled will be cleaned to professional standards and disinfected. The detention rooms in both facilities, but especially in Mannheim City Centre Police Station, where detention rooms have no direct fresh air, were also noticeably stuffy. Rooms should be aired sufficiently frequently. Response: The ventilation problems are difficult to remedy. Due to where the buildings are located and the fact that some of them are quite old, the air in the detention rooms’ anterooms can sometimes get stuffy. However, most of the detention rooms have ventilation systems. As an alternative, rooms are regularly ventilated by tilting the windows. Depending on the state detainees are in, they should be given the opportunity to wear clean clothing whilst they are in custody, especially during review hearings etc., however. To that end the facilities should keep clothes ready, for example hand-me-down jogging suits. In addition, it should be examined whether it is possible to give detainees sufficient clean clothing when they are released, for example disposable garments. Response: In future overalls will be made available which can be handed out to the detainee and billed later on. Alternatively, other spare clothes could be kept at the police stations which could also be worn after release. In the computer program “ComVor” which is used to process all custody procedures the forms must each be selected and filled out individually. When a particular procedure is completed no check is carried out to see whether all the required forms have been processed, especially those regarding the provision of information about rights. A custody procedure can, therefore, also be completed without any information about rights being given. The information forms on custody in accordance with section 28 of the Police Act are only available in the program in German. In addition, they do not contain all the necessary points which need to be addressed. Response: The “ComVor” computer program does contain all those templates and forms relating to the measure. Documents need to be selected individually since they are not all required in each individual case. A review of the recommendations regarding plausibility, having forms available in other languages and updating these forms has been commissioned. Wearing name or number badges increases transparency in dealings between officers and detainees. The Joint Commission therefore suggests once more examining whether such badges could be introduced. Response: All police officers have been given a name badge. They wear them on a voluntary basis. The relevant regulations oblige officers to identify themselves by showing their ID when requested to do so by persons affected by measures and to state their name and police station or to present a business card. Officers can also be identified by means of standard incident reports and custody records. The Joint Commission asked for a statement regarding the extent to which officers are trained in situations typically arising in police custody. Response: The police training curricula cover “Custody”, “Minimum Intervention”, “Proportionality” and “Basic Rights”. In addition, there is a separate module on “Custody” as part of “Fighting Crime”. In that module legal conditions, as well as practical aspects of custody and the specific features of helpless, sick, mentally disturbed individuals and drug addicts are addressed. Officers are also given situation training so that they can put into practice what they have learned in theory. The topic “Custody” is regularly included in deployment training conducted by local police stations and is also addressed when appropriate. 2.2 – VISIT TO BERLIN CITY POLICE CUSTODY IN 2012 On 14 December 2012 the Joint Commission visited Berlin City Police Custody. The facility can hold 25 people – in 10 single cells, two cells for five people, one for three and one for two people. The facility is responsible for custody generally lasting up to 12 hours. Those who need to be kept in custody for longer are transferred to the Tempelhofer Damm Central Custody Facility. The Joint Commission inspected two detention rooms, the sanitary area, the treatment room and the watch room. It talked to the supervising police officer 73