DETENTION FACILITIES IN GREENLAND FOR INTOXICATED PERSONS Investigation … ‘Was it very warm in Godhavn at the time?’ ‘The outside temperatures in Greenland can change a lot and very quickly,’ says the Chief Constable. ‘The central heating was turned on in the prison and the death was apparently due to the thermostat not working. However, this must be clarified by a detailed investigation and it is up to the central authorities in Copenhagen to decide how to proceed in the case.’ ‘You have presumably visited many prisons in Greenland. Do you believe their standard is fit for human beings?’ ‘I will go so far as to say that I wish several of the prisons were considerably better’, says the Chief Constable (…). ‘And hopefully the death in the cell in Godhavn will now result in improved standards.’’ On the basis of the media coverage, the Parliamentary Ombudsman opened an own-initiative investigation. He started by asking the Ministry of Justice for information about the result of the investigation which he assumed the Ministry would initiate. However, the case quite quickly developed into a complex project, including among other things six actual inspection trips to West, South and East Greenland in the period from 1991 until today. On the basis of the case concerning the death in a detention room in Qeqertarsuaq, the special building expert at the National Commission of the Danish Police had reviewed nine detention facilities for intoxicated persons on the west coast already by September 1989. In the report, four of the detention facilities were described as ‘completely unsatisfactory’. Conditions in the detention facilities in Qeqertarsuaq, which consisted of two rooms in the basement underneath the police station, were described as poor ‘in every respect’. The very thorough review among other things showed that the rooms were approx 3.35 m 2 large, without windows, air intake or any other kind of ventilation, that drilled ventilation holes in the walls to the corridor were covered and that the rooms were heated by plate radiators under the bolted-down wooden plank beds. In addition, there was only an earth closet and no bathing facilities. The material submitted to the Parliamentary Ombudsman showed that the room in which the man died had a cubic capacity of 6.7 m3, far less than half the minimum cubic capacity of detention rooms in Denmark. After reviewing the information about the detention facilities in Greenland for intoxicated persons, the Parliamentary Ombudsman stated among other things: 37