A/68/295 personality of prisoners, as potentially in conflict with the right to personal selfdetermination. 4 40. As a principle of general application, the Rules should explicitly consider all inmates as subjects of rights and duties and not objects of treatment or correction. Given that mental ill-treatment may be inflicted under the name of remedial, educational, moral, spiritual and other forces and forms of assistance, the review process offers an opportunity to revisit Rule 59 in order to limit the applicable methods to those respectful of the prisoners’ inherent dignity and value as human beings. In this respect, there is a need to revisit the concepts of “rehabilitation” and “re-education”, as well as of “corrective” and “correctional”, among others, in order to protect persons deprived of liberty from arbitrary intervention or treatment that may amount to torture or other ill-treatment. 41. The Special Rapporteur recalls the importance of introducing a rule allowing all who are deprived of their liberty to challenge expeditiously the lawfulness of the detention, e.g. through habeas corpus or amparo, as a safeguard for ensuring protection against torture or other ill-treatment. In all circumstances, the person deprived of liberty should have the right to inform his or her family of the arrest (Rules 44 (3) and 92) and place of detention within 18 hours (E/CN.4/2003/68, paras. 26 (g) and (i)). These rules should apply also to decisions to restrict the personal freedom of an inmate further, for instance by placing him or her in isolation or solitary confinement. In no case may a detainee’s contact with the outside world be dependent on his or her cooperativeness, be used as a disciplinary sanction or form part of the sentence. In accordance with principle 19 of the Body of Principles, access to the outside world can only be denied subject to reasonable conditions and restrictions as specified by law (see E/CN.4/2004/56, para. 43). 42. Furthermore, given that safeguards are particularly undermined when the detained persons are held in incommunicado or secret detention, the Rules should place an obligation on prison authorities to ensure that persons deprived of liberty are held in officially recognized and accessible places of detention. Police station chiefs and investigating officers should be held criminally accountable for any unacknowledged custody in cases where their responsibility, including command responsibility, has been established. The Special Rapporteur recalls that whether detention is secret or not is determined by its incommunicado character and by the fact that State authorities do not disclose the place of detention or information about the fate of the detainee (see A/HRC/13/42, paras. 8-10). 43. The maintenance of an official registry has been and remains one of the fundamental safeguards against torture or other ill-treatment. Although Rule 7 provides for an obligation to ensure proper registration, it lacks a provision obliging strict adherence to registration from the very moment of apprehension and transfer to police custody; the duty to have a comprehensive and accessible record of everyone deprived of liberty (International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, art. 17 (3)); information regarding the time and place of arrest as well as the identity of the arresting officials; the state of health upon arrival at the detention centre; and records of when the next of kin and a lawyer were contacted and visited the detainee. It also lacks a provision requiring accurate __________________ 4 10/23 See the recommendations contained in chap. III, on the right to personal liberty, of the report on the human rights situation in Mexico of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Available from www.cidh.org/countryrep/mexico98sp/Capitulo-3.htm. 13-42285