the prison and probation service During 2018 and 2019, the Parliamentary Ombudsman also made a decision in an own-initiative inquiry following an OPCAT inspection. The case concerns the isolation of inmates held on remand (Huddinge et al.). An inmate’s access to medical care During the inspection of the prison Västervik Norra, the Parliamentary Ombudsmen’s employees spoke to an inmate who had undergone a medical procedure at the prison. According to the inmate, the procedure was performed without anaesthesia. After the operation, the inmate had suffered bleeding that lasted for an entire night. According to the inmate, he contacted the night staff, but they stated that the officer on duty did not want to transport him to hospital. It was only during unlocking the next morning that the inmate received help. By then there was blood over “the whole cell”, and he was taken to hospital. Due to the details that emerged during the inspection, the Parliamentary Ombudsman decided to open an own-initiative inquiry to investigate the Prison and Probation Service’s treatment of the inmate.22 At the time of compiling this report, the Parliamentary Ombudsman had not yet made a decision in the case. Occupancy situation in the Prison and Probation Service During the winter of 2018/19, it was reported on several occasions in the media that the Prison and Probation Service had a shortage of, inter alia, places in remand prisons. Overcrowding in remand prisons meant that individuals held on remand had remained in the Police Authority’s police custody facilities. Similar information emerged during OPCAT inspections in the spring of 2019. For these reasons, the Parliamentary Ombudsman decided to investigate the occupancy situation in the Prison and Probation Service within the framework of an own-initiative inquiry.23 In spring 2019, ten inspections were carried out of which eight were unannounced. In addition to the eight remand prisons, a prison and a police custody facility were also inspected.24 During the inspections, it emerged, inter alia, that due to overcrowding, the double occupancy of cells occurs and that rooms unintended for holding inmates are used for occupancy. This means that inmates are held in, inter alia, visitor rooms and rooms intended for isolation-breaking measures, and that these rooms, therefore, cannot be used for the purposes for which they are actually intended. Furthermore, it emerged that overcrowding caused difficulties for staff in satisfying inmates’ right to daily outdoor access and the need for isolationbreaking measures. Two of the inspected remand prisons had, on several 22 See the Parliamentary Ombudsmen’s report p. 17, ref. no. O 46-2019. 23 See the Parliamentary Ombudsmen’s case, ref. no. O 19-2019. 24 Remand prisons in Falun, Helsingborg (Berga), Kalmar, Karlskrona, Malmö, Nyköping, Trelleborg and Växjö, the prison in Kumla (National Assessment Unit) and the police custody facility in Karlskrona. 41