48 7. The primary aspect of investigation: segregation of persons deprived… Children’s Home restricted their contacts with their relatives to phone calls and writing letters. After arriving at the Home for Children with Special Needs of the Károlyi István Children’s Center104 children had been placed in a so-called “receiving room” on the building’s ground floor for one week, sometimes for two weeks, before letting them join the community. Children staying in the receiving room could not leave the room, receive visitors or make phone calls. Children isolated this way had contacts only with the educators of the group they were to join and the staff members of the Methodological Division. Some of the children reported that they had not been let out on the open air while staying in the receiving room. The Director of the Home for Children with Special Needs described the reception protocol as “very good,” characterizing the placement of newly arrived children in the receiving room not as isolation, but as a method allowing the staff to provide the children with more supervision and protection. The documents dealing with the so-called safety isolation of children were superficial; it was established that, in some cases, the medical examination mandatory for children in isolation105 had not been conducted. 7.2. Method of inquiry into the isolation of persons deprived of their liberty within the place of detention In order to establish an efficient method of inquiry, I contacted the institution performing the tasks of the National Preventive Mechanism in the United Kingdom. Having reviewed the questionnaire used in the United Kingdom in 2014–2015, the staff members of the Department compiled a questionnaire for the domestic mapping of isolation in places of detention. The questions provided by the British NPM were based on two basic concepts. The first one was isolation, i.e., the “physical isolation of persons for disciplinary, safety, preventive, monitoring or administrative reasons. Such persons are isolated from the other detainees either in their physical environment or at the level of regimes. The institution reduces the possibility of social interaction and other activities.” The other was solitary confinement, i.e., isolation exceeding 22 hours. Substantial social interaction is reduced to a minimum, the environment is unstimulating. Accessible social interactions are chosen not by the person in isolation.”106 104 105 106 See Report AJB-705/2016. See Section 81/A, Subsection (6) of Act XXXI of 1997 on the Protection of Children and the Administration of Guardianship. See the Sixth Annual Report of the United Kingdom’s National Preventive Mechanism, 1 April 2014 – 31 March 2015, p. 22.