THE PENITENTIARY HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND TORTURE PREVENTION MECHANISMS admitted to various penitentiary institutions in 2013. 82 of them stated that they had been injured during and/or following their arrest. Information about these incidents was forwarded to the relevant investigation authorities. It is now necessary that these authorities carry out independent and impartial investigation into these allegations and those responsible are punished. Because the conditions in which accused persons are kept and their ability to actually exercise their legal rights may be manipulated to exert influence upon them, we deem it appropriate to evaluate these conditions and the actual exercise of these legal rights in practice. Under Article 95.1 of the European Prison Rules, the regime for untried prisoners may not be influenced by the possibility that they may be convicted of a criminal offence in the future. In its judgment in Varnas v. Lithuania, the European Court of Human Rights explained that Article 10 § 2 (a) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires, inter alia, that accused persons should, save in exceptional circumstances, be subject to separate treatment appropriate to their status as unconvicted persons who enjoy the right to be presumed innocent.86 During the reporting period, untried prisoners were allocated in the penitentiary institutions nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Of these institutions, only the institutions nos. 2, 5, 7, 8 and 9 remained operational by December 2013. In these institutions, untried prisoners are in the same conditions as sentenced prisoners in closed institutions. It should be noted that the Ministry of Corrections does not maintain statistical data about accused persons separately. Accordingly, it is impossible to separately deal with and analyze the medial needs of accused persons to help discern some general trends. The volume of medical services available to untried prisoners is limited as well. Thus, untried prisoners are not entitled to use the diagnostic and treatment services within the hepatitis programme. They have access to the programme’s prevention component only. Finally, accused prisoners are not entitled to conjugal visits while tried prisoners do have this right. Having the above-described facts in mind, it is safe to say that accused persons remanded to detention in Georgia are not provided with the rights and conditions appropriate to their status. Recommendations: To the Minister of Corrections QQ To start producing and maintaining statistical information about medical services provided to accused persons with a view of processing and analyzing these data thereafter; QQ To assess the special needs of remand prisoners and to take measures to satisfy these needs. To the Minister of Labor, Health and Social Protection Persons with mental disorder and the problem of drug addiction in the Georgian penitentiary system Pursuant to information received from the Ministry of Corrections, psychiatrists provided 10,752 prisoners with psychiatric consultation in 2013. 137 patients underwent a treatment course at the mental health department of the Medical Institution for Accused and Convicted Persons and 33 patients were treated at psychiatric divisions of civilian medical establishments. According to the same official information, outpatient psychiatric assistance was provided in 2,000 cases. In 2013, 76 prisoners were transferred to specialized civilian clinics for psychiatric treatment based on court decisions. According to the data provided by the Ministry of Corrections, by the end of the first half of 2013, 1,322 prisoners 2013 QQ To amend the “Rules of approving and implementing the programme for preventing, diagnosing and treating virus hepatitis C in pretrial detention facilities and institutions for sentenced prisoners” with a view of making accused persons eligible for appropriate medical services within the diagnosis and treatment component of the Programme. 86 Varnas v. Lithuania, par. 119. NPM Report 41