The Public Defender's Parliamentary Report 2015 notes that prior to imposing disciplinary penalties, the prison administration must examine if prisoners’ mental health or developmental disorders could influence their behavior or culpable actions or actions that served as the basis for imposing disciplinary penalties on them. It is unacceptable the prison administration to punish a prisoner for an action which is a direct result of his/her mental disease or limited mental capacity.

Pursuant to the Istanbul statement of 2007 on the use of solitary confinement cell, placement of prisoners with mental health problems in solitary confinement cells should be completely banned. It is unacceptable to place a prisoner with mental or physical disabilities in solitary confinement, when this kind of measure may further aggravate his/her condition.

In the Parliamentary Report 2014 the Public Defender addressed the Minister of Corrections to take appropriate measures in order to prevent placement of prisoners with mental problems in a solitary confinement cell. Nevertheless, in 2015 facts of placing mentally disabled inmates in solitary confinement were detected in the penitentiary department’s institutions N2 and N3.

Accordingly, the Public Defender once again calls on the Minister of Corrections to take all necessary measures to prevent the use of placement of prisoners with mental problems in a solitary confinement cell as a disciplinary punishment.