Tips for monitors Tips for monitors 1: Planning and preparing visits The planning and preparation prior to undertaking a visit to a place of detention is as important as the visit itself. This groundwork will not only set the overall goals of the visit, but it will also determine its scope (both in terms of time and content) 224 and who in the team will undertake the different visit-related tasks. Depending on the mandate of the monitoring body and the scope of the VERLTfocused visit, detention monitors will act on this topic in different ways, including: • Investigating individual detainees’ complaints, with the aim of examining allegations of potential rights violations arising from measures to prevent and counter VERLT in prisons; • Investigating individual detainees’ complaints, with the aim of documenting and providing recommendations to address related structural problems. In 2015, the French NPM, for instance, published a report on how “Islamist radicalization” was addressed in prisons, following up on complaints it had 225 received; • Conducting preventive visits to identify risk areas and systemic issues that lead or could lead to torture or other ill-treatment, to publicly report on risk factors for violations, and to make recommendations to the authorities accordingly. Under its preventive mandate, the Norwegian NPM, for example, examined and reported on the detention regime in the highest security level section of the Telemark prison, Skien branch, where one person is held on 226 terrorism-related offences; • Publishing thematic reports or opinion pieces focusing on the impact of VERLT-related measures on the conditions of detention and treatment of prisoners more generally based on visits to multiple institutions. The French NPM followed up on its 2015 report by focusing on “dedicated units” for prisoners convicted of terrorism-related offences and individuals considered as radicalizing to violence and advocating for violent actions, which was 227 published a few months after the establishment of those units, in 2016; 224 There is a relatively sizeable corpus of written materials to aid NPMs and other monitors in conducting visits to places of detention and monitoring methodology. These materials cover all aspects of detention monitoring, including the issue of adequate pre-visit planning and preparation. In a 2013 publication on the monitoring of police detention, for example, the APT identifies four key stages in preparing for visits as follows: research and information gathering, operational preparation, material preparation and mental preparation. Monitors focusing on VERLT as a topic may wish to keep these four specific stages in mind when preparing a visit to any place of detention. See list of available monitoring tools at the end of the Guidance Doc. 225 “La prise en charge de la radicalization islamiste en milieu carcéral”, CGLPL, 2015, op. cit., note 54. 226 The Parliamentary Ombudsman Norway – NPM , “Visit report: Telemark Prison, Skien Branch, 2-4 June 2015”. 227 “Avis du 11 juin 2015 relatif à la prise en charge de la radicalization islamiste en milieu carcéral” (in French only), Contrôleur Général des Lieux de Privation de Liberté, published in the French “Official Journal” on 30 Juin 2015; “Radicalisation islamiste en milieu carcéral: les unités dédiées ouvertes en 2016”, op. cit., note 108. 52