20 NORWEGIAN PARLIAMENTARY OMBUDSMAN National Preventive Mechanism against Torture and Ill-Treatment ANNUAL REPORT 2015 Activity programme and measures to combat isolation People who are deprived of their liberty are entitled to participate in meaningful activities such as work, education, recreational pursuits, physical activity and social interaction. At the same time, they have far less control over their own day-to-day lives. Closed institutions therefore have an important responsibility to ensure that people deprived of their liberty are offered a satisfactory activity programme. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) recommends that prison inmates get to spend at least eight hours a day out of their cells, engaged in meaningful activities.1 The NPM’s visits in 2015 have shown that several places of detention have not adequately succeeded in this respect. The NPM has found that some of the detainees in prisons, police custody facilities, at Trandum and mental health care institutions have such a low level of stimuli and human contact at times that it constitutes isolation or a state approaching it. Activity programme and solitary confinement in prison The NPM’s visits to five prisons in 2015 have shown that providing a satisfactory activity programme for all inmates poses significant challenges for the prisons. A lack of activity and human contact constitutes a clear risk of negative health and welfare consequences, and it can also negatively affect the inmates’ personal progression. This is a loss for the individual as well as for us all, because all inmates will one day return to society. Some inmates experience the arrival phase in particular as being so restricted that it constitutes isolation. This form of isolation is often not due to the inmates’ behaviour, but to the fact that the prison’s premises are not adapted for communal use. The very high occupancy rate, which delays the transfer of inmates from the admission section to the communal section, compounds the problem. This is a concern, and, in its reports, the Parliamentary Ombudsman has emphasised the importance of new prisons having suitable premises for communal activities in all its sections, including the admission or remand sections. Inmates who are locked in their cells for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact experience solitary confinement. 2 Such a low level of meaningful social contact can have serious consequences for the detainees’ mental health and it increases the risk of suicide. Based on knowledge about its harmful effects, the CPT has recommended that solitary confinement should only be used as a last resort and for the shortest possible time. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the UN 1 The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), CPT Standards, CPT/Inf/E (2002) 1 – Rev. 2015 page 17 paragraph 47. 2 The Mandela Rules, rule 44.