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The National Preventive Mechanism Publishes a Report on a Visit to the Penitentiary Department N2 in Kutaisi

As a result of the monitoring conducted by the National Preventive Mechanism it was determined that there are certain problems in the establishment N2 that negatively affect legal rights of prisoners placed in the establishment. Namely, the establishment is quite crowded and, space assigned for one prisoner in living cells is less than 4 square metres. Most solitary cells of the establishment are small and their sanitary and hygiene conditions are not satisfactory. It appears that the prison shop is not being adequately supplied. Also, access to items of personal hygiene represents a challenge for women prisoners.

Activities directed at prevention of suicide is lacking in the penitentiary establishment N2. The problem is also provision of adequate psychological help. In some cases, delay in provision of medical service and there are also certain difficulties with regards to provision of medications to the establishment. There are more than 500 inmates per one primary medical doctor while the establishment is served by just one on-duty doctor; there is also shortage of nurses. Inmates’ knowledge and awareness on medial service is also low; no confidentiality preserved when dealing with information of health conditions of prisoners.

Problems exist also in respect to psychological rehabilitation that is caused by insufficient number of psychologists and provision of inadequate working conditions to them. Involvement of inmates in rehabilitation activities is very low while the rehabilitation activities themselves are not very diverse. The scale and diversity of sport events are also unsatisfactory.

Another problem is lack of translators. This leads to a situation when it is almost impossible to speak to prisoners that do not speak Georgian. Inmates transferred from Eastern Georgia cannot adequately exercise their right to a meeting that is caused by long distance from place of residence of their families and material situation.

Additionally, analysis of the practice of imposing disciplinary penalties shows that there is a problem with applying those penalties based on the proportionality principle in the penitentiary establishment N2. As a result of examination it was defined that in most cases placement in a solitary cell is used as a disciplinary penalty that should be applied just in special cases.

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