Following the development of the new prison monitoring toolkit, five on-site coaching sessions for members of Civil Monitoring Boards (CMBs) were conducted successfully at Sincan, Antalya, İzmir, Rize and Diyarbakır prisons, with the participation of 48 CMB members. These sessions verified the applicability of the toolkit within the Turkish prison context, covering all prison monitoring stages, such as preparation, conducting the visit, reporting and follow-up to the visit. They contributed towards establishing a more uniformed prison monitoring approach throughout Türkiye and enhanced the capacities of the involved CMB members in better assessing the compliance of prison conditions and treatment vis-a-vis the applicable international standards and national legislation.
The impact report on the results achieved in the five pilot prisons and the revised version of the prison monitoring toolkit were discussed at the round table meeting on 29-30 June in Bolu, Türkiye. The meeting was attended by representatives of CMBs, the Ombudsman Institution, the Ministry of Justice Inspection Board and Board of Controllers, the National Preventive Mechanism and public prosecutors.
At the round table meeting, the CMBs members shared their experiences from the pilot prison visits. The main findings and the ways to further improve prison monitoring based on identified shortcomings and lessons learnt have been discussed as well. “The pilot visits changed the perspective and modality to perform visits, including conducting interviews with prisoners,” “empathy and respect showed to prisoners proved to build trust, resulting in prisoners becoming more eager to talk”, “triangulation of information is the key element of the visits”, “after the piloting visits, we feel more confident in performing visits”, were some of the impressions shared by the participants during the meeting.
Finally, the round table also marked the end of the process of developing an upgraded prison monitoring toolkit, which was finalised with the agreement of all project stakeholders and will be published and disseminated to all CMBs in Türkiye.
The meeting was organized within the scope of the Project entitled “Enhancing the Effectiveness of the Civil Monitoring Boards in line with the European Standards”, funded by Sweden, Switzerland, the Republic of Türkiye, the Human Rights Trust Fund of the Council of Europe and Canada.
