Part I
According to the CHR, respect for prisoners’ intimacy and personal dignity also means respect for peoples’ feeling of embarrassment, which is undoubtedly violated when a person is naked. Therefore, starting from 2015
the NMPT representatives recommended body search be carried out in two
steps, without the prisoner having to take off all his/her clothes. Instead,
the prisoner should be allowed to take off some pieces of clothing and put
them back on after a given part of the body has been searched. As a result of
the NMPT’s recommendations, the Regulation of the Minister of Justice of
17 October 2016 on security measures in organizational units of the Prison
Service47 contains Article 68(5), according to which during a (body) search,
the prisoner should be partially dressed; the searching officer first searches
through one part of the clothes, and the prisoner may put them on before the
other part is searched. The observance of this provision in practice in penitentiary establishments is verified each time during the preventive visits.
5. Absence or limited range of cultural and educational activities
for remand prisoners
Unfortunately, the problem relating to the organization, diversity and
availability of cultural, educational or sports activities for remand prisoners
has remain unsolved despite the plan to introduce relevant changes in this
regard, as was announced in the reply of the Undersecretary of State in the
Ministry of Justice dated 9 November 2016.48
The visits carried out by representatives of the NMPT in 2016 proved, as
in the previous years, that the basic cultural and educational facilities were day
rooms with tables for table tennis and with TV sets. In practice, no other activities outside the cells were available to remand prisoners. Thus, the postulates
contained in the NMPT’s thematic report on the situation of persons deprived
of their liberty in pre-trial centres and therapeutic care wards remain up-todate49. In view of the fact that such persons have no opportunity to work50 or
Dz. U. of 2016, item 1804.
Reply dated 9.11.2016 of the Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of Justice to the Report on the
Activities of the NPM in 2015, ref. no. DWMPC-III-0741-10 / 16.
49
More information on the observance of the rights of remand prisoners can be found in the CHR’s
thematic report The National Preventive Mechanism’s visits to therapeutic care wards for persons with
non-psychotic mental disorders or mental retardation and to units for remand prisoners, which is available
on the CHR website under the tab Publications on the rights of persons deprived of their liberty.
50
According to the data of the National Headquarters of the Prison Service, available on their website
under the tab Statistics, on 31 December 2016, of 4917 remand prisoners only 13 were employed (the
overall number of employed persons deprived of their liberty being 12472).
47
48
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