awaiting deportation, the probability of mental and/or physical injury is particularly high. With each detainee awaiting deportation, the ability to undergo detention and the question of any treatment required should be examined in a reception examination. The offer of a psychological reception session should not impair the detainee’s freedom of will. The Commission furthermore complains that no systematic examination takes place after failed deportation, as was also called for by the CPT in the 2005 report on Germany.25 Such an examination is indispensable since failed deportation entails a high risk of injury. Equal importance attaches itself to a routine departure examination, which however does not take place in Berlin-Köpenick facility for detention pending deportation. This is intended to prevent people who require urgent medical care from being deported to a country in which the necessary medical treatment cannot be provided. provided for by law since the legislature does not wish to create such a legal basis. Each detainee is said, however, to be able to voluntarily submit their health impairments to the police medical service. In its second statement, the Senate Administration stated that new arrivals were presented to a social worker on the first working day after their reception, who was able to clarify corresponding questions as to their medical care. The psychologist was said to go through the floors twice weekly, and also speak with all newly-arrived inmates. Where necessary, medical care, including psychiatric care, was provided for. The medical service in the detention awaiting deportation facility would be presented in future with each new arrival on reception or after a failed deportation in order to ask them as to their state of health and to offer a consultation with a doctor, should one be required. In 2005, some Länder already declared their willingness in future to have a medical examination carried out after a failed deportation (incl. Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia). The current lack of a legal basis referred to by the Senate Administration, furthermore, does not prevent at least offering detainees awaiting deportation a reception and departure examination. The detention code lists amongst other things the “permanent lighting of the detention room” as a special security measure. The use of permanent lighting as a security measure is incompatible with Art. 2 of the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as with Art. 3 of the European Convention on 25 The activation of the permanent lighting in the detention room is said to particularly serve the safety of the inmates in order to minimise the danger of self-injury, suicide or violent acts against others in specific individual cases of relevant conduct on the part of the detainee awaiting deportation. It is said to be a soft emergency or night cf. CPT, 2007, Report to the German Government on the visit to Germany carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment from 20 November to 2 December 2005, Strasbourg, p. 30. 61

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