Cold, malodorous and unimaginably dirty - these words describe the daily life at many facilities used for police custody. The people there come and go. People accused of murder, rape and economic crimes are kept together in large cells. Often, an arrest will lead to pre-trial detention - and then custody will undoubtedly last longer than just a couple of days.

The Human Rights Monitoring Institute was approached by a person whose pre-trial detention lasted for more than three months. "Three months without sleep," reminisces the man about how he felt while detained. "And not a single court hearing took place throughout this whole time," he adds.

Even after enduring the entirety of this dehumanizing cycle, he still hasn't been found guilty of fraud. The intimidation of his family, problems with his health, a suspension of his business and a ruined reputation - these are the only keepsakes he will retain from this episode of his life.

During the presentation of the results of "Pre-Trial Detention: Police, Prosecutors' and Investigating Judges' Perspectives", a study conducted by the Human Rights Monitoring Institute, Karolis Liutkevičius, a legal officer at HMRI, stated that Lithuanian courts are eager to order pre-trial custody and do not always act in accordance with the standards set by the European Court of Human Rights. Decisions to detain a suspect are often "rubber-stamped", and the officers themselves admit that pre-trial detention is often used as a tool to apply pressure.

A prosecutor involved in this study agrees with Karolis Liutkevičius: "A person who is isolated and deprived of his liberties, especially of his fundamental freedom - that of movement - is at his most vulnerable psychologically, and one may rightly expect that such a person is more likely to confess to a crime."

Still, a portion of the respondents were of the opinion that requiring the grounds for detention to be supported by more thorough reasoning, for example, by assessing alternative restrictive measures, would be excessive.

The interviewed prosecutors and judges admitted that media reactions play a role in the overuse of pre-trial detention. "People like to see other people detained," said a participating judge, summarizing the public opinion on this issue.

The study conducted by the Human Rights Monitoring Institute confirmed that systemic problems - relating to the use of measures intended to restrict liberty - are high in Lithuania. Perhaps the most serious of these is the deliberate abuse of pre-trial detention. A large portion of the specialists interviewed confirmed that pre-trial detention is sometimes sought - and often granted - even when the authorities understand that there is no real need for it.