Outcomes of Patients in Long-Term Opioid Maintenance Treatment.

Background: Despite the importance of duration of opioid maintenance treatment (OMT), only few studies have reported outcomes of long-term OMT.

Objectives: To describe outcomes of long-term (> 5 years) OMT patients with respect to substance use, physical and mental health, and socioeconomic characteristics.

Methods: Patients (n = 160) were recruited from 15 OMT offices in different regions of Germany.

HIV and incarceration: prisons and detention.

The high prevalence of HIV infection among prisoners and pre-trial detainees, combined with overcrowding and sub-standard living conditions sometimes amounting to inhuman or degrading treatment in violation of international law, make prisons and other detention centres a high risk environment for the transmission of HIV. Ultimately, this contributes to HIV epidemics in the communities to which prisoners return upon their release. We reviewed the evidence regarding HIV prevalence, risk behaviours and transmission in prisons.

When detainees have a disability: Their rights and fundamental freedoms.

This article describes and clarifies the human rights of persons with disabilities in the context of detention in light of the recently adopted and already in force Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Convention). Focusing on the Convention, the article sheds light on the legality of certain forms of detention affecting persons with disabilities, the substantive and procedural requirements for their detention, and on their rights in relation to conditions of detention. This article also provides an account of the different treatments and practices inflicted on persons with disabilities in prisons and other institutions and assesses whether they constitute torture and ill treatment.

The distinction between torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The present article seeks to clarify the distinction between torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The author argues that the decisive criteria for distinguishing torture from CIDT is not, as argued by the European Court of Human Rights and many scholars, the intensity of the pain or suffering inflicted, but the purpose of the conduct and the powerlessness of the victim and that as such the distinction is primarily linked to the question of personal liberty. He concludes that the "scope of application" of CIDT is a relative concept, that outside a situation of detention and similar direct control, the prohibition of CIDT is subject to the proportionality principle.