Human Rights in Bulgaria's Closed Institutions
describes any violations and corresponding reactions on the part of the staff. In some remand centres, staff members said that in cases of offence, they submit a report to the person in charge of the investigation, who decides which measures should be taken. The reaction of staff members in cases of violations consists only of conversations with the offenders, and if a given measure can help and if circumstances allow, the staff members move the offenders to other cells. Until 2-3 years ago, it is maintained that detainees were deprived of cigarettes or newspapers as a way to sanction offences, but this is no longer practiced. 2.4. Contact with the outside world and correspondence According to the report of the Enforcement of Sentences Directorate-General of the 25th November 2004, separate visiting rooms have been built in 37 of the remand centres. In the other fourteen, including those in regional centres such as Varna, Yambol, Kyustendil and Smolyan, there are no visiting rooms. In these centres, detainees meet visiting relatives and defence counsels either in the offices of those in charge of the investigations or in the entrances of the remand centres, in the corridors, on landings on the stairs or in former cells. The use of the offices of investigators, police investigators and of team commanding officers for this purpose makes special visits a problem, especially when there is a queue for ordinary visits, a meeting with defence counsels or a need for procedural action. With the amendments and additions to the Enforcement of Sentences Act of 2002, the following text was introduced into Art. 132, para. 3: “The correspondence of defendants is subject to inspection by the administration”. This restriction was thus regulated by law. With the Decision No.4 from 18 April 2006 however the Constitutional Court declared this provision unconstitutional and since then it is not applied. Curiously enough it continued to be applied in the case of the sentenced prisoners. 2.5. Supervision for legality In accordance with Art. 127 of the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria, the prosecutor’s office checks the legality of operations and exercises supervision in cases of enforcement of penal and other coercive measures. During BHC visits to remand centres, the supervision was subjected to special monitoring. A “prosecutor inspection book” is kept in each remand centre, in which the supervising prosecutors enter the dates of their visits and their observations. The frequency of prosecutors’ visits is not strictly regulated. An inspection of this book in the remand centres shows that the inspections entered very from several in the course of a month to several in the course of a year. At the beginning of 2006 the BHC noted that the remand centre in Troyan had not been visited in the last nine months. According to the staff in some remand centres in which few inspections are entered, the supervising prosecutor makes frequent visits, but does not enter each one into the book. Usually the supervising prosecutor visits on a monthly basis, but in some territorial remand centres weekly visits were said to have been made. The supervising prosecutor does not meet detainees on every visit, and individual face-to-face visits were recorded only in a few remand centres. In most remand centres, all that is registered is the
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