PART IV – SITUATION IN PLACES OF DETENTION In 2020, representatives of the NMPT carried out a total of 75 preventive visits. These were largely online visits, which was caused by the epidemic. However, direct visits were also made. Most of them were thematic visits to check the implementation of the recommendations of the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (SPT)53 and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT)54 issued to the Polish authorities following visits by these committees to places of detention. Moreover, in 2020, in connection with the detention of people protesting against the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal, representatives of the NMPT carried out ad hoc visits to police detention facilities. Their purpose was to conduct individual interviews with detained persons and to investigate the situation and conditions of their detention and imprisonment in the context of the implementation of the so-called minimum anti-torture guarantees. In total, in 2020, the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture conducted visits to: ✓ 15 prisons; ✓ 8 remand prisons; ✓ 8 police stations; ✓ 31 rooms for detained persons operated by the police organizational units; ✓ 7 juvenile educational centres; ✓ 3 24-hour care facilities; ✓ 1 sobering-up station; ✓ 1 juvenile correctional facility; ✓ 1 guarded centre for foreigners – re-visited. This chapter, in addition to the results of the visits, presents information on the functioning of detention facilities in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The information was collected during the thematic visits and the remote monitoring of places of detention. 53 SPT report on the visit to Poland in 2018, CAT/OP/POL/ROSP/1. 54 PT report on the visit to Poland in 2017, CPT(2017)62. 40