Edited by ITOFO.J

The 2009 human right report has described conditions in Mongolian prisons as poor but improving significantly during the year.

The overcrowded facilities and the low quality of medical care available to 5,200 prisoners – of whom 315 were women and 10 were juveniles - remained a concern. The sole prison facility serving Ulaanbaatar in Gands-khudag has a capacity of 500 detainees but held approximately 600, with at times eight persons locked in cells intended for two or three.

Moreover, many inmates entered prison infected with tuberculosis (TB) or contracted it in prison.

Conditions in pre-trial detention facilities were reported to be poor with sources reporting incidents of detainee abuse and forced confessions

Monitors from the diplomatic and human rights community were granted unaccompanied meetings with prisoners during the year, and NGOs reported that prison conditions improved in 2009, particularly with regard to general cleanliness and ventilation. In addition, the construction of 12 new prisons since 2006 and the refurbishing of old ones have subsided overcrowding. Besides, full-time employment of university-educated social workers and psychologists for consultations with prisoners has increased and a greater range of vocational, educational, outdoor, and religious activities has been promoted in prison facilities.

Nevertheless and always according to the report, the general public awareness of basic rights and judicial procedures, including rights with regard to arrest and detention, was limited, especially in rural areas. Despite legal provisions, many detainees were unaware of their right to a government-appointed attorney and did not assert it in 2009. There was a shortage of public-funded and pro bono attorneys for low-income defendants, particularly outside of Ulaanbaatar. To address the shortage, the government, working with the UN Development Program, placed an attorney in each of the provincial capitals and the districts of Ulaanbaatar to provide free legal advice. Nonetheless, some detainees refused to use state-funded attorneys for fear that such attorneys would not fairly represent them.

Furthermore, many defence attorneys’ law licenses were suspended for providing services to the victims of police violence from the July 2008 riots. The report also acknowledges that corruption in law enforcement agencies was endemic. The government’s Independent Authority Against Corruption opened cases on 240 complaints and transferred 107 complaints to other agencies. By the end of 2009, 32 cases were under investigation. The Special Investigation Unit (SIU) investigated a total of 379 subjects -- 208 police officers, 126 civilians, 32 investigators, eight intelligence agency officers, two judges, and three prosecutors.