of individual opinions appended by members of the Committee to decisions on admissibility (rule 92 (3) of the rules of procedure) or final Views (rule 94 (3)). It is particularly noteworthy that some members appended a joint individual opinion, whether concurring or dissenting. In the present volume six opinions were written at the stage of admissibility and nineteen individual opinions were appended to the Views, including three times a joint individual opinion of four members. action has been discontinued, the names of the author(s) and of the alleged victim(s) are replaced by letters or initials. In the case of interlocutory decisions, including decisions declaring a communication admissible, the names of the author(s), the alleged victim(s) and the State party concerned may also be deleted. 14. Communications under the Optional Protocol are numbered consecutively, indicating the year of registration (e.g. No. 1/1976, No. 415/1990). 19. While only a few communications involving the State party Jamaica had been registered during the period covered by volume 5, a significant increase in communications by Jamaican nationals awaiting execution led to the application of stricter criteria for the incorporation of such cases in volume 4. These cases also showed the impact of the Committee’s Views on the viability of legal redress within the Jamaican domestic legal system. After the Committee adopted its Views in Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan at its thirty-fifth session (see Selected Decisions, vol. 3, p. 121), the Committee considered in the Collins case (para. 6.5) and the Wright case (para. 7.3) whether an appeal to the Court of Appeal and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council constituted “adequate means of redress” within the meaning of the Jamaican Constitution. The Supreme (Constitutional) Court had earlier answered this question in the negative by agreeing to consider the constitutional motion of Pratt and Morgan. This is a clear example of the usefulness of the Optional Protocol procedure. 15. During the period covered by the present volume, there was a very significiant increase in the Committee’s caseload. The office of Special Rapporteur on New Communications, which had been established at the thirty-fifth session in 1989 under rule 91 of the Committee’s rules of procedure, was amended at the forty-second session in July 1991 to cope with the new circumstances. Under the revised mandate, the Special Rapporteur could issue requests for interim protection under rule 86 (important in view of the steady increase in death penalties during the period under review) and could henceforth recommend that communications be declared inadmissible. From the end of the fortyfifth session until the end of the period under review, the Special Rapporteurs transmitted 35 new communications to the States parties concerned requesting information or observations relevant to the question of admissibility. 16. Given the absence of information on State compliance with the Committee’s Views, the Special Rapporteur has considered it appropriate to establish a dialogue with States parties on measures taken to give effect to the Committee’s Views. Since the inception of the follow-up procedure, the Committee has considered follow-up information on a confidential basis. 20. In this connection, another issue assumed increasing importance. In view of the fact that most people awaiting execution had been held on death row for a considerable period of time, the Committee was confronted with the question of whether such treatment could be considered inhuman or degrading treatment under article 7 of the Covenant. In its Views in Barrett and Sutcliffe (Nos. 270 and 271/1988) the Committee replied in the negative, reiterating that prolonged judicial proceedings do not per se constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, even if they may be a source of mental strain and tension for detained persons (para. 8.4). 17. The new format of decisions on admissibility and final Views adopted at its thirty-seventh session in 1989, which was designed to achieve greater precision and brevity, continued to be followed during the period under review. 18. An important development in terms of jurisprudence was the steady increase in the number 3