SITUATION IN PENITENTIARY INSTITUTIONS Under Article 17(7) of the Code of Imprisonment, a short-term visit shall last from 1 to 2 hours. Short-term visits may be subjected to only visual surveillance by a representative of the prison administration save in the events described in the legislation. Article 50 of the Order of the Minister of Corrections and Legal Assistance No. 97 determines further details regarding the short-term visits. In particular, short-term visits should take place in special rooms located on the territory of penitentiary institutions. Depending on the type of a penitentiary institution, a short-term visit may be held in the form of a meeting or through a separating glass. It should be noted that visits are usually administered in a room with a glass partition with parties sitting across the partition. Such arrangement does not allow a prisoner any physical contact with his family members. Only in exceptional circumstances such as prisoners with serious health condition and or juvenile visitors, and subject to a prison director’s consent, may a visit take place without this barrier. Conditions in which prisoners are meeting with their guests are one of the important factors affecting prisoners’ successful social rehabilitation. Lack of direct contact and inadequate communication with the visitor across the glass partition is psychologically suppressive. Such visits violate the confidentiality of conversation too since prisoners may feel restrained to openly talk to their family members in the presence of other inmates. The Code of Imprisonment determines a limited list of persons who may pay short-term visit to an inmate. In particular, under Article 17(2), upon their written request, sentenced and remand prisoners may be allowed to receive a short-term visit from their close relatives (children, spouses, parents/adopting parents, adopted children and their descendants, grandchildren, sisters, brothers, nephews and their children, grandparents, parents of grandparents, uncles, aunts, father’s sisters, cousins, or any person with whom the inmate had been living together during the last 2 years before his/her imprisonment). It should be noted that, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has been referring to the said provision from the Code of Imprisonment stating that it allows prisoners to meet only with their family members and close relatives. The CPT regards it improper that prisoners are not allowed to meet with their friends, especially with consideration given to the fact that many prisoners are single, divorced or living apart from their families. Those who do not have families or close relatives are virtually deprived of the opportunity of maintaining contact with the outside the world and integrating into the society. Under the Code, inmates may not be visited by their friends and to receive some direct human support from them. We would like note with satisfaction the fact that a new paragraph 21 has been added to Article 17 of the Code of Imprisonment stipulating that “With the consent of the Chairperson of Penitentiary Department, sentenced or remand prisoners may be allowed to have a short-term visit with individuals who are not listed in Article 2(2) of this Law.” This amendment will play a positive role in resocializing sentenced prisoners. Recommendation to the Minister of Corrections: QQ To provide the possibility of conducting short-term visits without a glass partition. Under Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the family is the natural and fundamental group of unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. The ability of prisoners to receive long-term visits furthers this goal as such visits are the best way for prisoners to resocialize and maintain full-fledged contact with their close people – something that is most needed by inmates in closed-type penitentiary institutions. Under Article 172(1) of the Georgian Code of Imprisonment, a long-term visit means a period in which an sentenced prisoner is permitted to live with individuals listed in paragraph 2 of this Article on the territory of a penitentiary institution for sentence prisioners, in a room specially designed for this purpose, at the expense of this prisoner or the visiting individual, without the presence of the prison administration representatives. Pursuant to Article 62(2)(e) of the Code of Imprisonment, a sentenced prisoner who is serving his sentence in a half-open 2013 Conjugal visits NPM Report 19