For this examination of transparency in custodial systems as a means of protecting against abuse and ensuring safety, I shall concentrate on key elements of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) - the international oversight mechanism with a mandate to examine abuse and safety in all places where people are deprived of liberty in Europe, including prisons and gaols.

How might the CPT experience be relevant to the American context? The American experience has certainly been important for us in Europe: long before our prison systems had developed codes of standards or had applied modern management approaches to prisons, the USA was making progress in this direction. We learned much from the example of the American Correctional Association and its early development of standards for managing and monitoring prisons.

In Europe, oversight mechanisms have gradually developed, at the international, the national and the local level. Mistakes have been made along the way, but workable systems are emerging. Perhaps these developments can inform the debate in the US on safety and abuse in custody, on the theory that one can learn from other people's errors as well as from their successes. Clearly a facile transposition to the US context would be unhelpful; yet a consideration of the distinguishing features of international oversight in the European region may stimulate further thought about what elements are fundamental to all effective monitoring.

I shall highlight the distinguishing features of the CPT mechanism: legal mandate, independence, expertise, impartiality, powers of access and powers of enforcement, within the important context of shared values and principles which have slowly been developing in Europe since the Second World War. These features are inter-linked and their relationship dynamic; they require constant testing and reinforcing.

Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission