measure, according to the hospitalised person’s state of health and after a medical opinion from the doctor in charge of the UHSI”. The inspectors thus ascertain that the respective roles of medical staff and prison officials are not always clearly defined as far as the question of reacting in the face of incidents of a disciplinary nature is concerned. 1.1.3 Secure Rooms in Hospital Complexes During inspections of secure rooms in hospitals, it was asserted to the inspectors on several occasions that “the rules applied to patients are those of police custody”. These comments, which were openly expressed by police officers in charge of guarding hospitalised prisoners, reveal confusion with regard to the role of staff responsible for guarding prisoner-patients. With a few rare exceptions, no protocols exist with regard to the way in which prisoners hospitalised in secure rooms are handled. The respective roles of police officers and medical staff are not formalised, which leaves room for arbitrary practices that could be classed as inhum an or degrading treatment. For example, the inspectors have indeed noted that, within certain hospitals, police officers systematically confiscate all personal effects and items from hospitalised patients. This applies in particular to toiletries: towels, flannels, razors, shaving foam, soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste. It was even asserted to the inspectors that patients’ glasses were taken away. Books, journals and magazines are not authorised, with a few exceptions: “everything depends upon whether or not the police officers want to show a minimum of humanity”. In certain secure rooms inspected, prisoners were systematically placed under physical restraint on arrival and thus maintained throughout their stay within the rooms. Police officers have the greatest latitude with regard to the manner in which they perform guard duties within hospital secure rooms. Everything depends upon their personality and personal opinions and, certainly, on whether or not it is appropriate to “sanction” the patient’s behaviour. In most cases, there are no memoranda or texts indicating the manner in which surveillance is to be organised. The greatest vagueness and the greatest arbitrariness reign in this respect. Police officers have even been known to ask a nurse to carry out a search upon a female patient, in the absence of a woman in the guard team. One of the reasons given by police officers was apparently the absence of disclosure on the part of the prisons administration of information concerning hospitalised prisoners’ personalities: in application of a form of undifferentiated precautionary measure, maximum security rules were then applied 198. Because of the extremely difficult conditions of stay imposed by certain police officers upon patients, permanent tensions exist within certain departments. Thus within one hospital, the inspectors were informed that one police officer had had to be calmed down by a colleague and medical staff, because he was attempting to ill-treat a female patient. On her return to the remand prison the day after the altercation, the latter was prescribed the wearing of a surgical collar by a doctor of the UCSA. It appears that the police headquarters was informed of the incident; the police officer involved subsequently continuing to guard the hospital secure unit, apparently without changing his attitude. At one site in the Parisian region, the nurses declared to the inspectors they “regularly witness verbal or even physical assault between patients and guards”. In this hospital, they are led to carry out actions to which they are opposed, such as, for example, administering an injection 198 On this precautionary application of maximum security rules, see the details set out in section 1 concerning removal of inmates from prison in order to go to hospital. 105