Convicts to undergo medical examination without handcuffs

ANKARA

The Justice Ministry has been working on a regulation that will pave the way for handcuffs to no longer be needed when detainees and convicts are taken to the hospital for medical examination.

For terrorists and murderers, the doctor will decide whether to remove the handcuffs.

The new regulation is expected to be brought to the Parliament’s agenda in October.

The Justice Ministry will amend Article 50 of the Execution Law.

The article allows “handcuffs to be put on detainees and convicts for medical reasons, under the instruction and supervision of the physician” and leaves the discretion to the doctor.

It will be changed to putting on handcuffs to ill detainees and convicts when it is mandatory.

The work continues for the sick detainees. The ministry is also preparing a new regulation on the release of prisoners and convicts who cannot survive on their own.

In practice, sick prisoners and convicts can be released due to illness. In order to do this, a report must be obtained from the Forensic Medicine Institute or a full-fledged hospital.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ has announced last week that a new regulation would be made regarding prisoners and convicts who are sick in Kars. All eyes were on the details of this regulation.

“We decided to make new regulations concerning sick detainees and convicts,” Bozdağ said.

“I wonder how we can arrange this regulation in our current execution law and in other laws according to a more humane principle. We now have a regulation for those who cannot stay in prison due to their illness, but we see very closely that there are problems in the functioning of this regulation,” he said.

“The Turkish penal system is the most modern penal execution system. We have made very serious changes in our laws for a healthy functioning of the penitentiary system in Türkiye,” he added.

According to Bozdağ, there are no tortures in prisons and there is zero tolerance for torture and ill-treatment.