Part II: Tools for an effective follow-up and implementation institution and the supervising authority. The workshops and consultations in this Project revealed that correspondence only with the supervisory authority may lead to the visited institutions feeling excluded from the dialogue with the NPM and not knowing the content of the NPM’s report and its recommendations can lead to a ‘monitoring fatigue’, negatively influencing the cooperation and willingness to implement recommendations. Thus it is important that the exchange of findings and recommendations also happen with the visited institution, in order to be transparent and to build trust with the detention authorities. One of the bodies in the Dutch NPM has emphasised the issue of accessibility of NPM reports and recommendations and is currently reflecting on how awareness about its reports and recommendations could be increased among the staff directly, e.g. by making them more reader-friendly or presenting them directly to the staff.148 Conversely, places of detention may not wish for the state or supervisory authorities to be informed immediately about any shortcomings before they have had an opportunity to address them. NPMs may therefore need to bear in mind these political sensitivities in order to ensure a cooperative and collaborative dialogue with officials in the places of detention. œœ Preliminary reports for a prompt and direct dialogue with the visited institution Transparency necessary to build a relationship of trust is best ensured if feedback on the key NPM findings happens in a timely manner. However, for practical reasons, the finalisation of a first draft of the visit report may take the NPM several months. Consequently, some NPMs have decided to issue preliminary reports prior to a full version. The French NPM follows a two-step procedure when exchanging the visiting reports with the authorities. Firstly, an initial report (rapport de constat) is drafted by the members participating in the visit and this is shared with the director of the place visited in order to correct possible factual mistakes, give the director the chance to include developments that occurred after the visit or allow him/her to state if the institution disagrees with any of the findings. Then, after receiving a reply from the head of the facility, the visit report is finalised by the members of the visiting delegation and sent to the minister in charge (who provides his observations within usually 3 months), before the NPM eventually publishes the visit report together with the authority’s reply. Similarly, the Dutch, Estonian and the Slovenian NPMs do a factual check via a summary, preliminary or draft report to the authorities giving them a short time-frame to reply. The Slovenian NPM when it visits social care homes and psychiatric hospitals also applies a two-step procedure, with the specific aim of improving the dialogue with the institution visited. First a preliminary report, including the analysis and recommendations, is shared with the institution visited and then the full report is sent to the responsible supervisory authority/ministry, including the inspected institution’s response. Initially this procedure was chosen for social care homes and equivalent institutions – where unlike prisons and other institutions under the exclusive responsibility and control of the state – there is often a weaker connection between the institutions and the responsible ministry. It has proven useful to give the institution the opportunity to view the NPM’s findings and make comments if necessary, before it is passed on to the supervisory organ. This two-step procedure has also once been used for a prison and proven beneficial as well: the two-step procedure was said to guarantee that the visited institution promptly received the undistorted views of the NPM and allowed for a more intense dialogue on the operational level, thus strengthening transparency, trust and cooperation. It appears that a preliminary report is a very useful way to ensure a prompt written communication of the findings to the authorities and ensure a factual check. However, a challenge may be the additional resources required and a risk of prolonging the process of finalising and publishing the report.149 Thus, the See also Part I, Chapter 4. Due to the fact that the French General Controller (head of NPM) checks all reports and the time-frame for the authorities to reply, it can take several months until the supervisory institution receives the report and up to two years before the report is finalised and published. This is naturally problematic in terms of transparency and enabling followup by external actors. See France, General Controller of Places of Deprivation of Liberty, 2013 Annual Report, 18-19, 64. 148 149 - 52 -