Mínimum criteria in deprivation of liberty
liberty, regardless of whether or not the detainee was arrested in a cell, so that
such forms should necessarily be duly completed.
86. It must be ensured that full body searches be recorded in the Custody Book,
setting out expressly the reasons for it, and informing the court authority of the adoption
of such measures in the record of the investigations. The absence of entries of this kind
is explained by the police officers by the fact that full body searches are not made or
are carried out as an exception, which is inconsistent with many of the statements
made during the interviews with persons deprived of liberty, at which the detainees
stated that these searches were carried out.
In this context, it must be pointed out that bodily searches of persons deprived of
liberty must be carried out by persons of the same sex, and that any search
requiring a person to be nude must be made out of sight of the custody personnel of the
opposite sex.
87. It must be ensured that the belongings taken away from persons deprived of
liberty, prior to their arrest in cells, be duly set out in the custody form, the party
concerned to give his consent with his signature, and that they be kept in self-closing
bags, so that they may be opened only by the detainee himself on leaving the facilities.
Bags of belongings at the Police Station of the CNP of Torrelavega (Cantabria)
88. At the visits made to police facilities, particular importance is given to the
distribution of the cell area, to assess whether the cells where persons deprived of
liberty are found are very far away from the place where custody personnel is usually
located and, in such case, whether calling devices (electric bells, inter-phones, etc.)
exist for the detainees to be able to call the public officers since there is otherwise the
risk that they police may be unable to intervene in time in the case of incidents of
various kinds (violence between detainees, illness, fire, etc.). It must be point out that
appropriate measures should be put in place to ensure that persons deprived of
liberty may get in touch, at any time, with the personnel responsible for their
custody.
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