Section two Focus on detention issues Isolation – guidance for NPM monitoring bodies The NPM began work to develop comprehensive guidance to strengthen its monitoring of isolation in detention. This guidance was developed on the basis of the findings of the review of isolation and solitary confinement across detention settings conducted by NPM members in 2014–15, and draws from international and best practice. It will be published in 2016–17. The guidance will provide a comprehensive framework that NPM members should apply when examining isolation in detention, which has the potential to give rise to ill-treatment. It aims to improve the consistency with which NPM members monitor the issues. At the same time, the guidance will allow NPM members to identify and promote good and improved practice, and will provide a basis on which to formulate recommendations to strengthen policy. Immigration detention In November 2015, NPM members discussed the UK’s unique situation of having no statutory time limit on immigration detention. The UK has opted out of the EU Returns Directive, which sets a maximum time limit of six months (and 18 months in exceptional circumstances). This situation has been criticised by a number of international human rights bodies, including most recently the UN Human Rights Committee, which called on the UK to ‘establish a statutory time limit on the duration of immigration detention and ensure that detention is a measure of last resort and is justified as reasonable, necessary and proportionate in the light of the relevant circumstances’. The Scottish Human Rights Commission proposed that in light of the significant harm caused by indefinite detention, and considering the NPM’s responsibility under OPCAT to make recommendations that take into account relevant UN standards, the NPM should take a position on the issue. Some individual NPM members have already called for there to be a time limit. As a result, NPM members agreed that the NPM should call for a time limit on immigration detention. 25