8. Monitoring Risk In Specific Situations
to do so. Those who have been sent to prison or released might feel more able to
report abuse. Monitors can try to determine:
• Were lawyers allowed to be present during individual interrogations?
• Were detainees’ interviews audio-recorded?
• Was SGBV, including verbal abuse and threats, used during the interrogations?
Focus on specific groups
Some groups may be more vulnerable than others during interrogation, including
children, women and girls, members of minority and indigenous groups, and foreign
nationals or others who don’t speak the language of the arresting authorities. LGBTI
persons are particularly at risk of abuse during arrest and interrogation, especially in
contexts where same-sex relations and non-binary identities are criminalized.
LGBTI persons in prostitution report particularly high levels of abuse in police custody
and during interrogations. Police officers might also threaten to disclose a detainee’s
sexual orientation or gender identity in order to force a confession or to extort money
from them. When focussing on specific groups, monitors could consider the following:
• Are interpreters available during interrogations for those who do not speak the
language?
•
Do police officers use any offensive language or threatening actions when interrogating LGBTI persons?
•
Have police officers received any training on interrogating specific groups of detainees, including age – and gender-sensitive approaches?
8.3 Allocation and Supervision
The appropriate allocation and supervision of detainees/prisoners is critical in ensuring their protection against SGBV. Women should always be held separately from
men, and juveniles should always be held separately from adults. Women should be
attended and supervised only by female staff members.
All detainees/prisoners should be allocated to the appropriate facilities based on individual, ongoing risk and needs assessments, to avoid allocating potential victims
of abuse in the same cells as likely perpetrators. The allocation of LGBTI detainees/
prisoners, particularly transgender and intersex persons, is especially important in
this regard.
In some facilities, women and men, adults and children and detainees/prisoners with
different security classifications may be allowed to interact with each other outside of
their cells, such as at recreation time or during vocational training. Where this hap-
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