3 • Persons who are ill or mentally handicapped are particularly vulnerable; • Persons can be interned non-voluntarily and as a matter of course in accordance with civil law or in the context of a criminal procedure. Ministry of Health Psychiatric internment Unlike pre-trial detention and imprisonment, which are penal measures, administrative internment is, in most countries, a measure taken by an administrative or political and not by a judicial authority. Psychiatric hospitals, specialised institutions, psychiatric hospitals in prisons • Persons deprived of their liberty by an administrative measure can be: - political detainees who are arrested or incarcerated without charges; - foreign nationals who entered a State’s territory illegally and are awaiting an administrative decision regarding admission or expulsion. • The length of deprivation of liberty is not determined. Ministry of the Interior or other • The penal regimes governing the organisation and conditions of detention of the prisoners can vary depending on different factors such as the type and gravity of the offence or crime; • The regimes are: - high security; - progressive; - semi-open; - open. • They also depend on: - the doctrines on imprisonment as defined in legislation and their actual application by the penal administration; - staff numbers and their training; - the size of the establishment, etc. Administrative internment 3 • Prisons for persons serving out their sentences—the exact appellation varies from country to country; • Sections in pretrial detention facilities which can receive persons with shortterm sentences. The penal administration, whether independent or integrated into the Ministry of Justice Imprisonment (or serving a prison sentence after a definitive verdict has been passed) MONITORING PLACES OF DETENTION : A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR NGOS 19