APPENDIX Dnr O 7-2018 Page 16 (21) limits for remand prison periods. In practice, this has meant a culture in which the responsibility for not prolonging the period in remand prison unnecessarily has rested with the individual prosecutor and where the courts have generally been passive in checking that preliminary investigations are conducted in a timely manner. A culture and set of regulations that, in most cases, have certainly worked well with responsible and professional prosecutors, but which also leaves room for periods spent in remand prison to be extended too often and where the principle of proportionality is seldom put to the test and tried by the courts.36 For this reason, the inquiry submitted a proposal which would entail a suspect, as a main rule, being held on remand for a continuous period of no more than six months until charges have been brought. According to the proposal, a period spent in remand prison can only be extended further if there are special reasons. For a suspect who is under 18 years of age when he or she is placed in custody, the corresponding time limit should be three months. In order for remand to continue thereafter, it must be absolutely necessary.37 This proposal has not yet led to any change in legislation. The international scrutiny of the Swedish remand prison system has primarily been aimed at the widespread use of restrictions and the risks that this entails. My examination of surveys for the two categories, inmates without restrictions and inmates with restrictions, shows that the problem of isolation in remand prisons is not limited to those inmates who the Prison and Probation Service has a legal basis for refusing association with others. The lack of adequate premises, for example, means that isolation is something that also affects other inmates held on remand. With an appropriately structured operation, this unacceptable situation need not arise. I would like to emphasise that the Prison and Probation Service is responsible for shaping the enforcement of remand prison decisions to ensure the negative consequences for an individual being deprived of their liberty are counteracted (chap. 1 § 5 of the Remand Prisons Act). This is a far-reaching responsibility to ensure that, for example, there are sufficient staffing levels to work with isolation-breaking measures and, as such, can prevent inmates becoming isolated. I am very critical of the fact that the Prison and Probation Service has not progressed further in its work in this respect. As such, the Prison and Probation Service has had difficulty breaking the isolation of inmates for a long time. I fear that the measures that the Prison and Probation Service can and must take will be insufficient in resolving the problem of the high degree of isolation that currently prevails within the agency's remand prison system. At the dialogue meeting in March 2019, the 36 37 See SOU 2016:52 p. 114. See SOU 2016:52 pp. 116–120. – 97 – C