A/HRC/37/27 the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia; and Marina Ilminska from the Open Society Justice Initiative. 37. Ms. Kicker addressed the role of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in taking up complaints and making recommendations following monitoring visits. She referred to the Committee’s right to enter places of detention in all 47 member States of the Council of Europe in order to assess the conditions of detention and treatment of detainees. The Committee’s standards 9 and annual reports 10 set out the benchmarks for its monitoring work. The Committee regarded the aim of police questioning was to obtain accurate and reliable information to discover the truth about matters under investigation, not to obtain a confession from someone already presumed to be guilty. Ms. Kicker referred to Mr. Rachlew’s presentation of investigative interviewing and agreed that global guidelines on investigative interviewing would be useful. 38. In discussing the difficulty of gaining information about treatment in police custody, Ms. Kicker described the Committee’s practice of asking prison governors to make available the most recently arrived prisoner so that they could ask questions about the treatment they had received while in police custody. That had proved an efficient way of getting information, as detainees were unwilling to speak about their treatment while still in police custody. She urged the creation of regional mechanisms outside Europe owing to their standard-setting function. 39. Mr. Kvaratskhelia emphasized the importance of an effective complaints mechanism to offer redress and a national preventive mechanism to promote safeguards against torture. He described the role of the Office of the Public Defender, the national preventive mechanism of Georgia under article 3 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. He observed the need for political will to support national preventive mechanisms and engage in constructive dialogue. He detailed the compilation of information (official data, interviews, observations made during visits to places of detention, and individual reports of torture and ill-treatment) to form an overview of the risk factors stemming from ineffective safeguards and the psychoemotional state of those working in detention settings. Measuring which safeguards were in place depended on accurate records being made available to oversight bodies. In addition to unannounced visits and subsequent recommendations, national preventive mechanisms could contribute to awareness-raising in the community and influence the development of policies designed to bring about improvements. He spoke about the plan of the Office of the Public Defender to develop a network of civil society organizations to generate debates on torture prevention and establish training for law enforcement. He underlined that transparency and accountability measures were not only safeguards for detainees, but also for law enforcement officers to protect them against false allegations. 40. Ms. Ilminska offered examples of internal and independent complaints mechanisms and investigations in different regions. In Canada, she highlighted the work of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, which was mandated to investigate claims made against the police, and noted that police were wary of the Office as they knew mistreating detainees carried serious sanctions. She also mentioned the Canadian Special Investigations Unit (a civilian law enforcement agency, independent of the police, and an arms-length agency of the Ministry of the Attorney General). The Unit conducted independent investigations to determine whether a criminal offence had taken place in incidents in which police officers were involved and someone was seriously injured or died or there was an allegation of sexual assault. It had prosecutorial powers and was composed of civilians and former police officers. The head of the Unit could not be a former police officer in order to avoid a conflict of interest. The Unit communicated regularly with the media. Another example was the United Kingdom Independent Police Complaints Commission, an independent organization that oversaw police complaints in England and Wales. The Commission considered appeals from people wishing to raise concerns about the way that a 9 10 12 See www.coe.int/is/web/cpt/standards. See www.coe.int/is/web/cpt/annual-reports.