be examined and interviewed, in connection with alleged ill-treatment, only by a healthcare professional without the presence of the penitentiary establishment’s personnel.32 It is noteworthy that in the Parliamentary Report of 2015, the Public Defender recommended to the Minister of Corrections of Georgia to set out express instructions to guarantee confidentiality of interactions between health-care professionals and inmates and secure its practical implementation. This recommendation has not been fulfilled. Furthermore, as the inspections conducted in 2015-2016 show, during admissions of inmates to the most of the penitentiary establishments, the personnel of the latter were present at the medical screening. Sometimes, the administration personnel were present at inmates’ medical examination and registration by a health-care professional of the injuries sustained in a penitentiary establishment. Accordingly, in these penitentiary establishments the confidentiality of interactions between an inmate and a health-care professional is not observed. In the opinion of the Public Defender, the trust factor between an inmate and a healthcare professional is of paramount importance in terms of documenting the incidents of alleged ill-treatment, which is unfeasible without their confidential communication. The practice of 2016 concerning documenting the injuries on an inmate’s body does not differ from that of 2015. When admitting an inmate to a penitentiary establishment, he/ she is immediately met by a health-care professional and if there are injuries on the inmate’s body, they are documented. After the identification of injuries, the medical services rendered are entered into a file in accordance with a general rule and kept in the inmate’s medical history. Furthermore, similar to the previous years, in 2016, there was a Journal for Registering Injuries of Remand/Convicted Inmates, in which the medical personnel documented injuries found on inmates. Brief description of injuries and information about their origin were entered into the following columns: Self-Harm, Regular Injuries and By Other Person. Health-care professionals did not assess the compatibility of information submitted by an inmate concerning the origin of an injury with its nature. According to the information submitted by the Ministry of Corrections of Georgia,33 the 2015 and 2016 statistics of the bodily injuries found on inmates in penitentiary establishments are as follows: Number of Bodily Injuries of Inmates in Penitentiary Establishments Establishment 32 33 26 Self-Harm By Another Person Regular Unspecified Total 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 2016 2015 2016 No.2 533 624 100 129 236 246 7 6 876 1005 No.3 0 180 0 9 16 23 3 0 19 212 No.5 21 19 0 7 202 275 0 0 223 301 Council of Europe, 23rd General Report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), 1 August 2012 – 31 July 2013, para. 75. Letter no. MOC 71600192429 of the Ministry of Corrections of Georgia, dated 10 March 2016 (registered under no. 3159/16 at the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia). HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION IN CLOSED INSTITUTIONS