Long-term Deprivation of Liberty
In addition, whenever there are incidents with injuries, the images are generally
extracted and kept apart, but are only sent to court if it is so requested. On the
contrary, the criterion of the Ombudsman Institution is that, in case of this type
of incident, the recordings should always be sent to court ex officio.
In case of incidents with
79. Module 3 of the prison of Ocaña II (Toledo) did not have intercoms or sound
systems for calling inside the cells, contrary to the provisions of paragraphs 336
of the 2010 Annual Report and 121 of the 2011 Annual Report, and such change
is pending implementation, which should be carried out as soon as possible. As
regards the prison of Alcala de Guadaira (Seville), it was reported that the instal
lation of the sound systems for calling from the cells would be executed when
budget availability permits.
Sound systems for calling
80. As regards the information on rights and duties which are provided to inmates upon admission, during the visit to the women’s prison of Barcelona it was
detected that informative sheets were available on basic issues regarding the stay
at such center, in Spanish, Catalan, English and French, but not in other lan
guages which are common among female inmates, which should be remedied.
On the other hand, although other inmates normally act as interpreters and there
is usually no problem with communication, prisons should have a system for si
multaneous interpretation for those cases when it is necessary.
There should be a system
81. As regards medical assistance, the external experts that were part of the vis
it teams were able to check that, in general and from a technical point of view, its
quality was correct. A positive mention should be made of the high degree of
satisfaction of the inmates –both male and female– interviewed at the prison of
Alava and the women’s prison of Barcelona with the professional work carried
out by the healthcare team in general and, particularly, as referred to the latter, a
very favorable opinion of the mothers regarding the pediatrician. There was only
one complaint from a female inmate, in relation to the medical assistance re
ceived on the previous night. However, once the medical-forensic expert, who
was part of the visit team, had examined said inmate and her medical history, the
action taken by the healthcare team was deemed correct.
Adequate medical
82. In the Moscow Declaration of 2003, the World Health Organization recom
mended for public health services to establish close links with the prison health
services, or to be directly integrated with them. Along the same lines, Law
16/2003, of 28 May, on the cohesion and quality of the Spanish National Health
Service, provided for the prison health services to be transferred to the Autono
mous Regional Communities for their full inclusion in public health services.
However, up to this day, the health services of the Basque Country prisons are the
only ones in Spain where a transfer of the functions and services has been imple
mented from the State authorities in healthcare matters to an autonomous re
gional community, which this Institution was able to verify during the visit to the
prison of Alava.
Although the prison health
THE OMBUDSMAN OF SPAIN
injuries the recordings must
be sent to court ex officio
should be installed
for simultaneous
interpretation
assistance
services have been
transferred to the
Autonomous Communities,
only the Basque Country
has implemented the
transfer of competencies
83
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