bilingual person is deployed. To date it is not evident whether the police physician deployed an interpreter or just some other bilingual person in the specific case. Therefore, the NPM suggested several changes to Detention Log III. At the intake of a prisoner, a medical case history sheet (questionnaire) must be filled out for him or her. This sheet contains numerous medical terms, which can only be understood by someone with a good command of the language. A self-assessment or inflated self-assessment provided by a detained person can result in a prisoner providing false information about the state of his own health because he does not correctly understand the medical terms. For this reason, the NPM suggested that every detained person should automatically receive the medical case history sheet in his or her own native language – regardless of his or her knowledge of basic, everyday German. The case history sheet should be in the native language The Federal Ministry of the Interior stressed that police and prison authorities make every effort to ensure proper communication between medical staff and non-German-speaking detainees. If necessary, physicians must bring in interpreters when assessing the person’s fitness to undergo detention or other medical questions. Interpreters versus bilingual persons In practice, a three-stage process is used: 1. enlisting the assistance of fellow prisoners, 2. enlisting the services of employees charged with assisting persons in detention pending forced return or with repatriation counselling, and 3. enlisting the services of interpreters. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, this system has proven its worth thus far – when individual requirements are taken into account. Therefore, the Federal Ministry of the Interior does not intend to enlist the assistance of professional interpreters for medical examinations on an exclusive or even a more frequent basis. Of course, bilingual persons (e.g. relatives, fellow prisoners or employees charged with assisting persons in detention pending forced return or with repatriation counselling), who are utilised for medical examinations, are not subject to any duty of confidentiality with respect to health-related patient data. However, the Federal Ministry of the Interior stressed that such bilingual persons may only be deployed with the consent of the affected prisoner. In this regard, the Federal Ministry of the Interior also informed the NPM of an advanced training event held in June 2014 with 23 participants from all of the Lander. This event again sensitised police physicians to the necessity of a precise verbal exchange between the physician and the person being examined and the need to enlist the assistance of interpreters or bilingual persons. The Federal Ministry of the Interior ordered the inclusion of the following items in Detention Log III: 1. the distinction between deploying an interpreter and a bilingual person, 2. the full name of the 126