UNDERSTANDING DIGNITY AND SECURITY IN PRISONS The challenge for prison administrations is to maintain security while safeguarding the human rights and dignity of the persons deprived of liberty. Policies, for example in the format of a code of conduct, should be in place in order to authoritatively guide prison administration and staff when implementing measures in the name of security. Moreover, contingency planning should be conducted in order to establish appropriate procedures and behaviour of personnel in different scenarios, and allow for prison staff to be trained accordingly. UN Prison Incident Management Handbook: ‘Contingency plans need to clearly detail and describe the nature and extent of authorized use of force to address the incident. Key aspects of contingency planning include: • roles, responsibilities and chain of command for key prison staff and external support personnel (police, fire services, medical services, etc.) are explicit, and mutually agreed-upon and understood; • joint training and simulation exercises are conducted with police and other external support; • detailed processes are outlined to effectively respond to a particular incident; • communication linkages between the prison and external support are provided for, before, during and after the incident.’21 It is important for bodies monitoring places of detention to enquire whether and which protocols exist and how they balance security and dignity. 4. Legality, necessity and proportionality of security measures Limitations or other encroachments of rights may be legitimate; however, they must fulfil all three of the following criteria established under international law. • Legality – the measure must be provided for by laws that are in conformity with international human rights standards. • Necessity – other means must have proven incapable of maintaining order or security. • Proportionality – the measure taken must be the least intrusive to achieve the objective of maintaining order and security and be imposed for the shortest duration. However, in the context of security procedures applied in places of detention, these principles are often neither enshrined in laws and policies, nor observed in practice. Security measures are also regularly applied based on vague possibilities rather than concrete indication of their necessity, or applied in a systematic manner without individual risk assessment. Furthermore, in the context of public pressure and ‘tough on crimes policies’, the boundaries of necessity and proportionality may be pushed. For example in many countries, without regard to the presumption of innocence, detainees who are under investigation or subject to pre-trial detention may be subject to regimes even more restrictive than those for convicted prisoners. Clear rules and regulations are needed governing matters such as the use of force, instruments of restraint, body searches, disciplinary sanctions and any other schemes applied in the name of security. Moreover, the application of such measures should be documented in order to allow for scrutiny, including through an independent complaints mechanism. Policies and procedures should be reviewed on a regular basis, and they should be published in line with established good practice on transparency. Monitoring bodies should examine these regulations and should inquire what security levels are applied in the respective place of detention, what they imply and how detainees are classified for allocation to such security levels. They should also request information on who takes decisions relating to classification and the application of security measures such as body searches, instruments of restraint, use of force or solitary confinement, on what criteria these decisions are based, who oversees their application, and whether and how they are documented. 5. Public attitudes and societal context Over the last decade, in many countries there has been a growing perception of insecurity by the general public that has led to an increased demand for a more repressive response by state authorities. While this does not always reflect the reality – crime has been falling in many Western countries for example – there has been increased pressure to get ‘tough on crime’. Be it the fight against terrorism,22 drug trafficking, organised crime,23 crimes against or by children, high profile media cases in particular have resulted in a call for expanded competences for law enforcement, longer prison sentences and the rights of detainees to be restricted. These have even included an erosion of the prohibition of torture.24 21. United Nations, Prison Incident Management Handbook, 2013, p32. 22. See, inter alia, Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT), Defusing the ticking bomb scenario: why we must always say no to torture, always, 2007; Jean Maria Arrigo, ‘A utilitarian argument against torture interrogation of terrorists,’ Science and Engineering Ethics 10, 2004, pp543-572. 23. See, for instance, a recent report on the situation in Mexico: ‘In the name of the fight against crime’: study of the torture phenomenon in Mexico. Available (in French) at http://unmondetortionnaire.com/IMG/pdf/Rapport_Mexique.pdf <accessed 17 October 2013> 24. See ACAT France, Annual Report 2010, ‘Les écrans de la torture’ by Jean-Etienne Linarés, pp273-290. 6 | Penal Reform International | Balancing security and dignity in prisons: a framework for preventive monitoring