–7– possibilities for them to maintain meaningful contact with their families and other close persons. During the first years of imprisonment in particular, restrictions on contacts are likely to disrupt or even destroy such relationships. It is also important that life-sentenced prisoners have genuine access on as regular a basis as possible to visits, telephone calls, letters, newspapers, radio and television to maintain their sense of contact with the outside world. 79. Life-sentenced prisoners should have access to as full a regime of activities as possible, and normally in association with other prisoners. Work, education, sports, cultural activities and hobbies not only help pass the time, but are also crucial in promoting social and mental health well-being and imparting transferable skills which will be useful during and after the custodial part of the sentence. The involvement of prisoners in these activities, in addition to their participation in offending behaviour interventions, represents a significant factor in the ongoing assessment of each person’s performance. They allow staff of all grades to better understand prisoners and enable the staff to make informed judgments as to when it would be appropriate for the prisoner to progress through the regime and be trusted with lower security conditions. The possibility of such progression is crucial, for the management of the prison and for the prisoner. It motivates and rewards the prisoner, providing staging posts in their otherwise indeterminate world, and ensures a deeper relationship between the assessing staff and the prisoner, which contributes to dynamic security. Indeed, the effective implementation of dynamic security should make a crucial contribution to the process of assessing when it is safe to allow the individual prisoner access to the community, initially in the form of escorted short leave, then moving on to unescorted overnight leave and finally to conditional release into the community. Good staff will have developed an in-depth understanding of the individual, which they can share with decision-making bodies and with those who will take over responsibility for supervision and support in the community. Many existing systems make poor use of staff, especially basic-grade security staff who usually spend by far the most time with the prisoners. They are often discouraged – or forbidden – from getting to know the prisoners and thus a great opportunity for developing positive relationships between staff and prisoners is lost. Such relationships, within appropriate parameters, not only enhance security but can also help motivate prisoners to co-operate with regimes and give staff a much more positive experience of prison work than is available to a prison officer acting purely as a turn-key. Of course, this requires appropriate staff selection, training, supervision and support from other professionals in the system. But the benefits, as experienced by several member states and observed by the CPT, are manifest. 80. There are undoubtedly some life-sentenced prisoners who are very dangerous. However, the approach should be the same as for other sentenced prisoners and includes: detailed assessments of the individual situation of the prisoners concerned; risk management with plans to address the individual’s needs and to reduce the likelihood of re-offending in the longer term, while affording the necessary level of protection to others; regular reviews of security measures. The objective, as with all dangerous prisoners, should be to reduce the level of dangerousness by appropriate interventions and return the prisoners to normal circulation as soon as possible. Conclusion 81. The CPT calls upon member states to review their treatment of life-sentenced prisoners to ensure that this is in accordance with their individual risk they present, both in custody and to the outside community, and not simply in response to the sentence which has been imposed on them. In particular, steps should be taken by the member states concerned to abolish the legal obligation of keeping life-sentenced prisoners separate from other (long-term) sentenced prisoners and to put an end to the systematic use of security measures such as handcuffs inside the prison.