The report “Still Behind Bars” was published by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Association for Legal Intervention.

The report is a summary of the second round of monitoring conducted in early 2014 by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Association for Legal Intervention, at the request of the Minister of the Interior. The first report, “Migration is not a crime,” was issued in the wake of the 2012 protest, in the form of a hunger strike, by foreigners placed in guarded centers. This year’s monitoring aimed to check how the situation has improved and whether promises made by public authorities have been fulfilled.

Among the foreigners sent to guarded centers are individuals who stay in Poland without a valid residence permit and persons applying for refugee status. These people are not criminals.

The conducted monitoring showed that Polish authorities have taken a number of steps to reform the guarded centers: foreigners have been given more freedom to move within the centers and free access to mobile phones; repressive practices, such as roll-calls, compulsory attendance at meals and personal and room searches, have been partially curtailed.

Still, what has not changed is the prison-like look of the centers and a limited access to psychological and legal counseling. On top of that, increasingly more children stay at the centers. Minors currently make up nearly a quarter of the centers’ population, as compared to 10 percent recorded during the previous monitoring.

“It shall never be in the best interest of the child to be kept in detention due to reasons related to migration,” says Dr. Witold Klaus, head of the Association for Legal Intervention. Children are kept in guarded centers surrounded by barbed wire fences, where playrooms have bars on the windows and access to education is not sufficient. “Certainly, these factors are not conducive to the child’s development," adds Dr. Klaus. Both the HFHR and the Association for Legal Intervention make the point that detention of children should be absolutely forbidden.

Another serious problem is the lack of a system for identification of violence and torture victims. "Such persons should be identified sufficiently in advance so that they never end up in guarded centers,” say Jacek Białas of HFHR. “Furthermore, it is important to provide foreigners placed in guarded centers with access to psychological and psychiatric assistance. Psychologists and psychiatrists employed in guarded centers have to be independent from the Border Guard and speak languages of foreigners," adds Mr. Białas.

The monitoring also revealed practices violating the dignity of foreigners. For instance, those who need to see a doctor are still transported handcuffed and in prison vans, which is a humiliating experience for them. They feel like criminals and are seen as such by many Polish people. Regrettably, a practice of addressing foreigners by their identifications numbers has not been totally abandoned.

Another problem is that foreigners detained in the centers don’t have proper access to legal aid. “The question of creating a special system for financing legal aid for foreigners has been discussed and worked on for a long time now. However, this has not brought any visible development yet. Not enough is done by NGOs in this regard,” stresses Dr. Klaus.