Places visited by the National Preventive Mechanism in 2011 should only be searched by staff of the same gender and that any search which requires an inmate to undress should be conducted out of the sight of custodial staff of the opposite gender. Mixed gender staffing is another safeguard against ill-treatment in places of detention. The presence of both male and female staff can have a beneficial effect in terms of both the custodial ethos and in fostering a degree of normality in a place of detention. Mixed gender staffing also allows for appropriate staff deployment when carrying out gender sensitive tasks, such as searches84. Irregularities related to the place of performing strip searches – the lack of guarantee that no third persons were present, and the lack of information about the course of the procedure were found in 8 PDRs85. Inappropriate choice of the place to perform searches consisted in practice in the use of a monitored room86 or a connecting room (corridor, hall) accessible for third persons87. Among the establishments where irregularities of strip searches of the detainees were revealed were Chojnice PDR and Kętrzyn PDR, where additionally some searches were carried out by persons of opposite gender. In the opinion of the officers on duty in the former establishment, the criticised procedure could be justified by the fact that strip searches of a woman were performed by two male officers to ensure more effective defence in case of sexual harassment charges by the detained person. In the opinion of the Mechanism, such an explanation is unacceptable. In order to verify the entries in the duty log books confirming that PDR’s officers controlled the state of detained persons through spyholes in the doors of the rooms where those persons were kept, the employees of NPM used recordings from the monitoring system. In accordance with the wording of Article 13 of the Order No 1061 of the Police Commander in Chief on methods and forms of executing tasks in rooms for detained persons or persons brought to sober up of 2 September 200988, officers on duty in PDRs are obliged to control the behaviour of detained persons at least every 30 minutes or at least every hour if the room is equipped with a monitoring system. Due to the fact that during the visit, 7 establishments had neither monitoring equipment nor equipment for archiving monitoring recordings89, it was impossible to compare the content of duty log books with the monitoring recordings. In 3 other PDRs, inconsistencies were revealed between the time of controlling the rooms for the detainees that had been entered in the log book and the monitoring recordings that were to confirm the said control90. With reference to these units, the Mechanism ordered that the obligation to control the behaviour of persons detained and placed in PDRs should definitely be complied with. In PDR Warszawa VI, the analysis of the duty log book revealed that no controls of the state of detained persons were carried out at night. Police officers informed the NPM  See: para. 26 of the 9th General Report [CPT/Inf (99) 12].  PDRs: Tarnów, Kalisz, Grudziądz, Sławno, Gorzów Wlkp., Lublin, Chojnice, Kętrzyn.  PDRs: Kalisz, Sławno, Lublin. 87  PDRs: Tarnów, Grudziądz, Gorzów Wlkp. 88  Dz. Urz. KGP No 12, item 56. 89  PDR Poznań-Stare Miasto does not have a monitoring system; PDRs in Olesno, Zwoleń, Sochaczew, Zawiercie, Chojnice, Drawsko Pomorskie have monitoring systems but without a possibility of archiving the recordings. 90  PDRs: Ostrów Wielkopolski, Drawsko Pomorskie, Kętrzyn. 84 85 86 53