26th June 2012
Monitoring and inspection of places of detention, as well as the establishment of an independent external mechanism for the review of prisoners’ complaints, are central to the protection of human rights of prisoners and form part of Ireland’s obligations under international law.
This Briefing is a summary of the IPRT Position Paper 7: Complaints, Monitoring and Inspection in Prisons, which outlines the international standards pertaining to external scrutiny mechanisms, and assesses the current system of oversight in Ireland against those standards. It further makes recommendations for the improvement of current mechanisms, including a call for the establishment of an Office of Prisoner Ombudsman to deal with individual complaints.
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Respect for rights in the penal system with prison as a last resort.