The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) began its work one year ago. In 2014, the NPM conducted announced and unannounced visits to Tromsø prison, Tønsberg police custody facility, Drammen police custody facility and Bergen prison. Details on the visits are provided in the 2014 annual report.
“Human rights violations do occur in Norway. This is evident from the NPM’s work in 2014. As shown by the visits carried out in the NPM’s first year of work, persons deprived of their liberty are at risk of having their rights violated. Detained persons are easily forgotten in day-to-day life, and many are indifferent about what happens to them,” says Aage Thor Falkanger.
The NPM, a department under the Parliamentary Ombudsman dedicated to the prevention of torture and ill-treatment, has conducted visits and submitted a number of recommendations to both prisons and police custody facilities.
“Overall, our impression is that the institutions value our visits and consider them a useful opportunity to evaluate their own practices,” says the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
Following each visit, the NPM publishes a report detailing its findings and recommendations. The visits conducted in 2014 revealed, for example, degrading conditions in security cells at several prisons, inadequate procedures for the exchange of information between the police and the correctional services with a view to preventing suicide, and a lack of adequate health services for inmates and detained persons. A number of examples of good practice were also found, both in prisons and in police custody facilities. All visit reports are available on the website of the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The NPM’s annual report, which is also published online, contains a summary of the visit reports.
In 2015, the NPM will continue to focus on the conditions faced by persons deprived of their liberty in prisons and police custody facilities, and will also begin visiting psychiatric institutions, the police immigration detention facility and child welfare institutions.
