Report of the CHR on the Activities of the National Preventive Mechanism in Poland The CPT has objections to the very principle of such accommodation arrangements in closed prisons and those objections are reinforced when, as is frequently the case, the dormitories in question are found to hold prisoners under extremely cramped and insalubrious conditions. No doubt, various factors – including those of a cultural nature – can make it preferable in certain countries to provide multi-occupancy accommodation for prisoners rather than individual cells. However, there is little to be said in favour of – and a lot to be said against – arrangements under which tens of prisoners live and sleep together in the same dormitory. Large-capacity dormitories inevitably imply a lack of privacy for prisoners in their everyday lives. Moreover, the risk of intimidation and violence is high. Such accommodation arrangements are prone to foster the development of offender subcultures and to facilitate the maintenance of the cohesion of criminal organisations. They can also render proper staff control extremely difficult, if not impossible; more specifically, in case of prison disturbances, outside interventions involving the use of considerable force are difficult to avoid. With such accommodation, the appropriate allocation of individual prisoners, based on a case by case risk and needs assessment, also becomes an almost impossible exercise. All these problems are exacerbated when the numbers held go beyond a reasonable occupancy level; further, in such a situation the excessive burden on communal facilities such as washbasins or lavatories and the insufficient ventilation for so many persons will often lead to deplorable conditions. Also, in accordance with Rule 19.3 of the EPR, prisoners shall have ready access to sanitary facilities that are hygienic and respect privacy. Rule 15 of Mandela Rules is similar and states that the sanitary installations shall be adequate to enable every prisoner to comply with the needs of nature when necessary and in a clean and decent manner. The international standards referred to above are considered as a certain minimum of conditions deemed acceptable by the Member States of the Council of Europe and the United Nations. The representatives of the NPM fully share the position expressed by the CPT and stress the need for ensuring appropriate sanitary and hygienic conditions in residential cells with over a dozen persons. In the opinion of the representatives of the Mechanism, one lavatory per 9-16 persons prevents a person deprived of liberty from satisfying physiological needs at all times and can also be a source of conflicts between inmates. It is also difficult to agree with the statement that all inmates in the establishment are provided with the equal right of access to sanitation, as there is one cell with one lavatory per 2 persons and another one with one lavatory per 11-12 inmates. Sanitary facilities are significantly overloaded primarily in the morning and thus some inmates always have to wait long for the lavatory. However, the employees of the OCHR did not identify any progress in the implementation of the recommendation of 2014 on covering sanitary areas in single cells. In her letter to the Director General of the Prison Service34, the CHR wrote that sanitary facilities in single cells should be covered to at least make it impossible to see an inmate performing Cf. general letter of 25 March 2013, RPO-700317-II-702/12/MK. 34 20