VISITS BY THE JOINT COMMISSION 4.2 – STRIP-SEARCHES Bavaria was occasioned by the G7 Summit which was held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Given that a total of only two people were taken into custody during the entire summit and no one was being held in custody at the time of the visit, the Joint Commission was unable to assess the conditions of treatment. The structural conditions of detention were deemed to be appropriate and gave the Joint Commission no occasion to make any recommendations. Since its inception the Joint Commission has visited police stations across all the Länder. The visits were both announced and unannounced, and were made at different times of the day and night. The reports on the visits to the police stations in Lübeck and Bremen were not available at the time of this Annual Report going to press. Occasioned by its visits the Joint Commission essentially made the following recommendations: Those taken into custody in police stations in Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia are strip-searched as a matter of principle. No case-bycase examination is carried out. Strip-searches represent serious interference with a person’s general rights of personality. The police cited the degree of danger posed by those being taken into custody, but this is no justification for not examining each case individually. Cologne Administrative Court recently confirmed this assessment.24 Where a stripsearch is deemed necessary, the reasons therefore should be documented in writing. 4.3 – INSTRUCTION ABOUT RIGHTS In some facilities, for example in North RhineWestphalia, staff are unable to see whether a person taken into custody has been comprehensibly and comprehensively instructed about their rights, as it is the officer booking in the person who is responsible for giving such instruction. There were also cases in Neunkirchen, Saarbrücken St. Johann and Frankfurt (Oder) Police Stations where the person being taken into custody was not immediately informed about their rights. Nor was a note made of whether such instruction was subsequently given. Regardless of the legal basis on which people are taken into custody, they must be immediately, fully and comprehensibly instructed in writing about their rights. It must be possible to establish whether this information has been provided or whether it needs to be done at a later point in time, and this must be documented in writing. 4.1 – PHYSICAL RESTRAINT The Joint Commission noted that metal handcuffs are being used to physically restrain those taken into custody in police stations in Berlin, Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia. Frankfurt (Oder) Police Station and Potsdam Police Station each have a call button which a person placed under physical restraint would have to use to call help if necessary, but it is located next to the door into the custody cells. Anyone placed under physical restraint will be unable to reach the call button. At Cologne Police Headquarters the Joint Commission also noted the high number of instances in which physical restraint was applied in 2014, namely 1,150 times. Physical restraints should as a matter of principle not be applied in police stations. Physical restraint represents a high risk to the life and limb of the person under restraint. There is a particular risk of injury when metal handcuffs and shackles are used. The Land police forces of other Länder, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland for instance, and the Federal Police do not use physical restraint at all anymore. Following its visit to Cologne Police Headquarters the CPT also recommended entirely doing without the use of physical restraints. 23 The National Agency regards applying physical restraint to one arm or one leg as inhuman and degrading too. 4.4 – CUSTODY BOOKS The custody books should in principle contain comprehensive information about the circumstances under which a person is taken into custody. The practice of splitting the custody books into three, as is the case in Saarbrücken St. Johann Police Station, is questionable given this requirement. The “custody books” in Frankfurt (Oder) Police Station comprised separate “files”, some of which were full of gaps. A supervising police officer should regularly examine the custody books to see whether they are being kept properly, should address any shortcomings and document the checks performed. 23 See CPT report on its visit to Germany in 2010, CPT/Inf (2012) 6, margin no. 29 24 See Cologne Administrative Court, judgment of 25 Nov. 2015, file no. 20 K 2624/14, margin no. 102 et seqq. – NRWE 32