Report of the Commissioner for Human Rights on the activities of the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture in Poland in 2017
What is happening behind closed doors? In isolated places that are not easily accessible and
even more difficult to escape from? What can be concluded from visits to places housing persons deprived of their liberty?
Violence and torture as well as cruel and inhuman treatment - even though prohibited - still
occur, especially away from “the public eye”. They occur, therefore, not only in dark places,
but also in places that do not seem to arise suspicion, such as:
prisons and pre-trial detention centres,
psychiatric hospitals,
social care homes,
sobering-up stations,
juvenile detention centres and shelters,
rooms for detained persons of the organizational units of the police,
Police emergency centres for children,
youth care centres,
rooms for detained persons of the organizational units of the Border Guard,
Border Guard’s detention centres for the purpose of expulsion,
closed detention centres for migrants,
rooms for detained persons of the organizational units of the Military Police,
nursing homes,
facilities providing 24/7 care to the disabled, chronically ill and elderly.
3