MONITORING PLACES OF DETENTION : A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR NGOS 119 Large-capacity dormitories inevitably imply a lack of privacy for prisoners in their everyday lives. Moreover, the risk of intimidation and violence is high. Such accommodation arrangements are prone to foster the development of offender subcultures and to facilitate the maintenance of the cohesion of criminal organisations. They can also render proper staff control extremely difficult, if not impossible; more specifically, in case of prison disturbances, outside interventions involving the use of considerable force are difficult to avoid. With such accommodation, the appropriate allocation of individual prisoners, based on a case by case risk and needs assessment, also becomes an almost impossible exercise. All these problems are exacerbated when the numbers held go beyond a reasonable occupancy level; further, in such a situation the excessive burden on communal facilities such as washbasins or lavatories and the insufficient ventilation for so many persons will often lead to deplorable conditions. The CPT must nevertheless stress that moves away from largecapacity dormitories towards smaller living units have to be accompanied by measures to ensure that prisoners spend a reasonable part of the day engaged in purposeful activities of a varied nature outside their living unit.” CPT, GR 11, §29 Comments International standards recommend individual over collective accommodation. For various reasons individual accommodation is not always possible. Collective accommodation should, however, be limited as regards the number of persons sharing it. Where accommodation is collective, it is important to select those persons who will be sharing it in such a way as to limit the risks of abuse among detainees. Overcrowding in detention premises is a frequent problem. This concept is based on the relationship between the surface area (in square metres) of the place and the number of persons living on it. 3