On March 29, the city of Dnipro presented a custody records system to ensure rights of detainees. The system was launched in the temporary detention center No. 1 in the city of Dnipro.
On March 29, the city of Dnipro presented a custody records system to ensure rights of detainees. The system was launched in the temporary detention center No. 1 in the city of Dnipro.
From now on, a new integrated system will be in use to record all actions relating to detainees during their stay in the police unit. Specially trained human rights inspectors will interrogate detainees, conduct electronic document processing and round-the-clock video surveillance. Such a procedure ensures the security of both detainees and the police officers. How the system looks from the inside and its essential elements are shown in the video. “Theentireprocessofaperson’sdetentionin the National Police bodies must be monitored through the custody records system, ensuring the rights of detainees. This will enable the police officers to monitor the compliance with procedural standards, whereas the people will receive reliable law enforcement services and be sure that under no circumstances the police officers will abuse their position”, – says Kostyantyn Bushuev, Deputy Head of the National Police of Ukraine.
A key principle of the custody records system to ensure the rights of detainees is to guarantee the security and decent conditions of a person’s detention.
“The system of ensuring the rights of detainees involves keeping an electronic register of actions relating to detained persons, as well as the establishment of a separate unit of human rights inspectors. Notifying relatives on the detention, timely legal advice, proper medical care and compliance with other rights of detained persons will be under constant control of human rights inspectors”, – explains Roman Romanov, director of the Human Rights and Justice Program Initiative of the International Renaissance Foundation.
The custody records system to ensure the rights of detainees is one of the necessary conditions to guarantee fair justice. It will be gradually implemented in all temporary detention facilities and police departments of Ukraine.
“For a long time, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has strongly called upon Ukraine to undertake robust efforts to ensure that a person’s detention is properly recorded. It is necessary to identify who brought a person to the police department, who gave the order to do so, when exactly that happened, for what reason, in what status (witness, victim etc.), who a person was transferred to, and when he or she left the police department premises. We hope that the introduction of a custody records system to ensure the rights of detainees will be a step towards the implementation of the Committee’s persistent recommendations in this field”, – says Mykola Gnatovsky, Head of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture.
The system was implemented due to joint efforts of the Human Rights Protection Office within the National Police of Ukraine, the International Renaissance Foundation, the Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation and the Human Rights Expert Center.
