CAT/OP/MLT/1 and established the Board of Visitors for Detained Persons (“the Detention Board”) as NPM by Legal Notice 266. 10. The Prison Board and the Detention Board exercise the functions of a National Preventive Mechanism for the prevention of torture, as provided for in the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture.1 The tasks and powers of the NPMs, therefore, derive from the OPCAT, in particular articles 19 and 20. However, the failure to set out in detail the tasks and powers of the NPMs in their respective regulations, in accordance of the OPCAT and the NPM Guidelines, has hindered the NPMs in undertaking the full range of functions that the OPCAT, the NPM guidelines and other relevant instruments require the NPMs to undertake. 11. The Prison Board is composed of nine members, who serve the Board on a part-time basis, and it does not have a secretariat to support its work. While the Prisons Act says that the members of the Prison Board shall be appointed annually by the President of Malta, currently the members are appointed annually by the Ministry of Home Affairs and National Security. When this report was written, eight out of nine current members were new, having been appointed for less than a year. 12. The Detention Board is comprised of six members, who serve the Board on a parttime basis, and it does not have a secretariat to support its work. The Detention Board currently has only four members, who have been on the Board since 2008 without an official notice of renewal of their appointment. Two positions became vacant in 2013 as a result of those members’ resignations and these have not yet been filled. 13. The mandate of the NPMs do not cover all places of deprivation of liberty in Malta. The Prison Board is mandated to monitor mainly the Corradino Correctional Facility (CCF) and its subsidiary unit for juvenile detainees (YOURS) and the Detention Board is mandated to monitor the Safi detention centre and the Hal Far Detention Centre. The Detention Board also monitors other places where migrants and asylum-seeker detainees are sent for medical treatment or deportation, including the Mount Carmel Psychiatric Hospital and 3 police lock ups. In practice, however, Mt. Carmel Psychiatric Hospital is under the jurisdiction of, and is visited by, the Mental Health Commissioner. 14. While individual members of the Prison Board have made frequent visits to the CCF, the Board itself made 12 official visits to the CCF from July 2013 to June 2014 2. During visits, detainees can request an interview with the members of the Board in private and they can also send their complaints to the Board via email through a focal point (a correctional officer) in CCF. The Board holds quarterly and/or monthly board meetings to follow up on complaints and reports made by detainees. 15. In 2013 the Detention Board carried out 33 visits, to the detention centres at Hal Safi and Hal Far as well as to Mount Carmel Hospital, only to the parts where a number of detainees were inpatients. In 2014, from January to May, it made 16 visits to the detention centres, Mount Carmel Hospital and the police lock-ups. During these visits, the Board met detainees who requested private interviews. The Detention Board also held monthly plenary meetings to discuss the overall situation of the detention centres and activities carried out by the Detention Services and other civil society organizations. 1 2 4 Article 104 (f) of the Prisons (Amendment) Regulations 2007 and article 3 (e) of the Board of Visitors for Detained Persons (Amendment) Regulations 2012 state, respectively, that the Prison Board and the Detention Board shall “shall have functions to as the body of persons responsible for a National Preventive Mechanisms for the prevention of torture, as provided for in the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture.” Report on the implementation of OPCAT in Malta, submitted by the State party in August 2014, P.7.

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