alternative to detention (the case law of the European Court of Human Rights O.M. V. Hungary (no. 9912/15). Therefore, detention, as deprivation of freedom, should be an exceptional, lastresort measure, stipulated in national legislation and only applied when absolutely required, proportional to a legitimate purpose, assessed under the particular circumstances of the case and in compliance with human rights. Individuals who are deprived from freedom are the most likely to be subject to torture and other ill treatment, since detention places are, by definition, closed from the outside world. With no independent external monitoring, such abuses may occur at any time. Therefore, the more open and transparent detention places are, as they take visits, the less abuses we shall have. Article 1 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (adopted in New York on December 10, 1984 and ratified by Romania through Law no. 19/1990) definestorture as“any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.” According to the Special Rapporteur of the UN on torture, Sir Nigel Rodley, the conceptions of the international society on deprivation of freedom must be subject to radical changes. The basic paradigm, accepted for at least a century, is that prisons, police offices and similar institutions are closed and secret places, whose internal activities are hidden from the public view. (...) The opaqueness paradigm must be replaced by transparency. The presumption must be of open access to all places where deprivation of freedom takes place. 4