ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PUBLIC DEFENDER OF GEORGIA 2013 prison for sentence prisoners is entitled to 2 conjugal visits per year and to 1 additional conjugal visit a year as an incentive measure. Article 65(3) of the Code provides that life prisoners serving their sentence in closed institutions for sentenced prisoners are entitled to 2 conjugal visits per year and to additional 2 conjugal visits a year as an incentive measure. It is worth noting that the Code of Imprisonment does not prescribe rules and procedures of administering conjugal visits for sentenced prisoners in closed-type penitentiary institutions, which is a serious flaw in the law. However, it is contemplated to amend the Code by adding a new paragraph “d” to Article 65(1) entitling sentenced prisoners serving their sentence in closed penitentiary institutions to 2 conjugal visits per year and to 1 additional conjugal visit a year as an incentive measure. Pursuant to Section 4 of the Order of the Minister of Corrections and Legal Assistances No. 42 dated 18 March 2011, a conjugal visit shall be administered at the expense of the sentenced prisoner or his/her visitor. One such visit costs 60 Georgian Lari payable via wire transfer. We welcome the fact that a new paragraph 11 was added to Article 172 of the Code of Imprisonment stipulating that “a conjugal visit may be administered without payment of the fee, according to a procedure determined by the Minister.” It should be noted that the current fee for conjugal visits often times becomes a barrier to maintaining a family contact. Against this background, the mentioned amendment in the law allowing free-of-charge visits should be evaluated as proactive approach. Data on long-term visits in the Georgian penitentiary institutions Table 1: Number of long-term visits № Name of the Penitentiary Institution Number of long-term visits registered 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Institution No. 257 Institution No. 6 Institution No. 11 Institution No. 14 Institution No. 15 Institution No. 16 Institution No. 17 188 270 18 1342 962 57 1346 The Institution No. 8 has no infrastructure for administering conjugal visits. With prior agreement with their families, life prisoners are taken once a month to the Institution No. 6 where they can receive such long-term visits. As regards remand prisoners (accused persons), Article 17(10) of the Code of Imprisonment provides that they are entitled to only short-term visits pursuant to the rules and requirements established by the Georgian legislation. Remand prisoners may not receive long-term visits, which restricts their opportunity to maintain contact with their families. We believe that an outright prohibition of conjugal visits for remand prisoners is not justified. This issue has been discussed by the European Court of Human Rights in its judgment in the case of Varnas v. Lithuania.58 The case concerned a complaint lodged by Thomas Varnas, a Lithuanian national whose request for a conjugal visit was denied by the prison administration while he was kept in custody at a remand prison under the pretext that only sentenced prisoners had the right to such visits. The European Court of Human Rights disagreed with the respondent Government’s argument that remand prisoners had no right to conjugal visits due to the prevailing public interest of investigation. The Court stated that the applicant’s wife was neither a witness nor a co-accused in the criminal cases against her husband, which removed the risk of collusion or other forms of obstructing the process of investigation. The Court eventually found that 57 In the Institution No. 2, the infrastructure for long-term visits became operational on 11 September 2013. 58 Varnas v. Lithuania, Judgment of 9 December 2013. NPM Report 20