A/HRC/37/27 police force had dealt with a complaint. It also handled serious cases that police forces were obliged to refer to the Commission, whether or not someone had made a complaint. Ms. Ilminska also referred to Ukraine, which had passed legislation to create the State Bureau of Investigation to investigate torture perpetrated by law enforcement officers. 41. Ms. Ilminska also mentioned the Independent Police Investigative Directorate of South Africa, which conducted independent investigations into allegations of criminal offences committed by members of the South African Police Service and metropolitan police services, and the South African Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services, which enabled a judge to inspect and report on the conditions and treatment of inmates in correctional centres. Although those centres received government funding, they asserted their independence. She also referred to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice in Ghana, which, although it had the power to look into allegations of mistreatment in detention, did not have the power to prosecute. 42. Ms. Ilminska underlined that properly functioning oversight mechanisms needed to be independent in terms of their decision-making capabilities and investigatory functions. Their decisions should be implemented and police should have a healthy fear of investigations. Multidisciplinary teams, including doctors and social workers, were vital to gain a full picture and ensure a fairer investigation of allegations concerning vulnerable persons. She noted that parallel investigations could be carried out by external and internal bodies in relation to the same case and that could be helpful in societies in which public trust in the police, and their capacity and willingness to investigate themselves, was low. 43. During her presentation in the first session, Ms. Donoso had already underlined the value of the visit in 2016 of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture to Chile and its call for the establishment of a national preventive mechanism and an effective commission for prison visits. Noting that the national human rights institution would serve as the national preventive mechanism, she argued that it would be better for a different, independent institution to serve as the national preventive mechanism. She underscored the need for the commission on prison visits to play a more active role and conduct more visits. There were unannounced, unrestricted visits every six months. During 2016, four officials were removed because prisoners were subjected to solitary confinement and had not received medical care. 44. During her presentation in the second session, Ms. Samar outlined the monitoring visits undertaken by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in detention centres and prisons. During 2016, it undertook 168 visits and removed some police chiefs. Due to the ongoing conflict, however, the Commission could not visit every part of the country. Ms. Samar referred to the inhuman methods of torture employed by other actors, such as the Taliban and different warlords. Although some international forces remained in Afghanistan, the Commission had not documented recent occurrences of torture committed by those forces. The Commission delivered human rights training to the police, army, judges, intelligence service and the public. The Commission also performed a monitoring function regarding the police, army and intelligence service. That included looking into the sexual harassment of women serving in the police, army and intelligence service in order to protect those women and increase the number of women working in those services. 45. During the discussions that followed the panellists’ presentations, a representative of one member State referred to the useful role of custody officers in ascertaining if police abuse had occurred. A representative of one national preventive mechanism noted the importance, in some cases, of the possibility for the police to anonymously report wrongdoing that they had witnessed. A representative of one NGO emphasized that the value of national preventive mechanisms was their unrestricted access to places of detention and their private discussions with detainees. The representative asked about the role of national preventive mechanisms in training law enforcement officers on the implementation of effective safeguards and investigative interviewing. A representative of another NGO asked how national preventive mechanisms could monitor informal detention prior to official detention and queried if complaints mechanisms should have prosecutorial powers. The representative emphasized the importance of compiling guidelines on the minimum requirements for complaints mechanisms, including the need to: act swiftly when a complaint was filed; have a system in place that ensured confidentiality; and order 13