CURRENT PRACTICE – ON-SITE VISITS TO ADDRESS EXCEPTIONAL RISKS AND CHALLENGES In Italy, the NPM found it necessary to conduct visits during and after widespread riots in prisons.29 In the United Kingdom, HM Inspectorate of Prisons developed a new approach, involving short scrutiny visits (one-day duration) carried out by a smaller delegation (two or three inspectors) to prisons and other places of deprivation of liberty. Such visits focus on issues essential to the safety, care and basic rights of those detained in the current circumstances.30 In Kazakhstan, the NPM was involved in the development of a plan with the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Ministry of Interior, and CSOs for “special visits” during the lockdown to penitentiary facilities. This allowed the NPM to maintain preventive visits to selected places of detention in maximum compliance with sanitary and epidemiological requirements of the authorities. In Chile, while the NHRI had initially decided to suspend visits, it nevertheless proceeded to respond to urgent issues, such as riots and escape attempts, by carrying out some targeted visits. During these visits, the Chilean NHRI called on the authorities to address inadequate treatment and conditions within pre-trial detention facilities. Following the NHRI’s interventions, several detention centres carried out COVID-19 testing campaigns, improved hygiene and sanitary measures, and the authorities agreed to commute the sentences of 1,500 detainees to reduce overcrowding. In Bolivia, during the early stages of the health emergency, the NPM carried out a preventive visit to a detention centre in La Paz where women are detained with their young children, in order to monitor health protocols and recommend appropriate health and hygiene measures. The NPM also distributed PPE and hygiene products to the women and their children, as the authorities were unable to carry out such distributions. In the vast majority of contexts, NPMs have suspended Some monitoring bodies have decided to suspend full visits completely or in part –in line with the ‘do no harm’ preventive visits but maintain individual private inter- principle – because they were unable to take sufficient views with persons deprived of liberty. This allows for precautionary measures to guarantee the health and reduced exposure to infection of NPM members and safety of both the people they would encounter in places detainees, while still allowing for the collection of specific of deprivation of liberty and their own. The inability to and general information on the place of deprivation of take precautionary measures can be connected with liberty in question. In Georgia, the ombuds institution, a lack of adequate and/or sufficient PPE, as well as in its function as the NPM, has maintained this type of the conditions within the place of deprivation of liberty, visit throughout the crisis. which make social distancing guidelines and/or hand hygiene unfeasible. In the Australian state of New South Wales, the oversight body has conducted a virtual inspection of a correctional centre. The inspection process had been planned 29 Italian NPM, ‘Forte preoccupazione del Garante nazionale per le gravi violenze negli Istituti. Impegno per garantire informazione corretta sui provvedimenti adottati’ [Strong concerns of the national authority for the rights of persons deprived of liberty regarding serious violence in detention facilities. Commitment to ensure correct information on the measures taken], 9 March 2020. 30 See HM Inspectorate of Prisons, ‘COVID-19 Updates’, and, the United Kingdom NPM, ‘The UK National Preventive Mechanism – preventing ill-treatment in the context of COVID-19’, April 2020. 10