1. Seclusion and restraint: background, definitions, human rights standards and key principles for assessing their use a. Background This report examines the use of seclusion and restraint across different detention contexts in New Zealand. It is based on visits to seventeen different places of detention including prisons, health and disability units, a youth justice residence, a children’s care and protection residence, and police custody suites, which took place between 26 October 2016 and 11 November 2016,1 and on material provided before, during and after those visits, including some extensive data sets. The majority of visits were conducted in the course of one day, and were centred around the areas where seclusion or segregation took place. Visits typically started with a brief meeting with the unit or institution’s manager and key staff, followed by a visit to the relevant unit where we took some time to inspect the physical facilities and daily routines, chat to staff and, where possible, service users. Staff in each of the units visited were asked to describe in detail the individuals housed in the unit at the time, why they were there, and when they were likely to leave. This gave us a sense of who, in practice, ended up in these units. In addition to physically visiting places of detention, each of the places visited was asked to make available, ahead of the visit, pertinent documentation dating back six months. This included, for example, registers of people held in the unit and a sample of personal files, registers of use of force and restraint incidents, daily observations and so on. We also asked for details of the institution’s complaint policies and registers of complaints made over the last six months prior to the visit. In prisons, we also asked for registers of disciplinary hearings (‘adjudications’) in order to better understand why and 1 See Appendix 1 for a list of all the facilities visited. 15