- 69 143. For example, at Patras Prison, the visits room is divided down its length by a floor to ceiling partition, the top half of which is a Perspex screen. Up to 15 prisoners were placed shoulder to shoulder on one side of this partition communicating with two or three visitors each on the other side via several small pierced holes in the screen; the resulting cacophony of sound can easily be imagined. The few “open” visits took place in the main entrance of the prison administration building, thus ensuring no privacy; moreover, the prisoner and his visitors remained separated by a glass partition running down the middle of the table. The visiting facilities at Malandrino Prison were equally unconducive to promoting contact with the outside world, consisting of two inhospitable rooms, one with a row of closed visit booths and the other with a single long, partitioned, table for open visits. At Thiva Prison, the visiting facilities were, like the rest of the prison, bleak and functional: closed visits took place in a room with 23 glass booths with a telephone for communication; and open visits were in a room usually used for legal conferences, a place that could not be less child centred or family oriented. Open visits could be granted upon request and generally were for women with children below 16 years of age. However, women inmates met by the delegation stated that the trauma of an open visit was so great that they dreaded having to subject themselves or their children to such procedures again; the children were searched before and after the visit while the mother (inmate) was strip searched both before and after the visit (a Roma inmate said that she had also been subjected to a cavity search)88. Further, during the visits, mother and child were only allowed to hold hands by way of physical contact (to embrace or kiss the child was prohibited). Such an approach to open visits certainly does not promote family ties and appears unjustified in view of the search procedures in place. 144. The CPT calls upon the Greek authorities to review the arrangements for visits, with a view to: increasing the amount of visiting time offered, preferably to at least one hour every week; allowing ordinary visits to take place under less restrictive conditions. The use of closed booth-type facilities should be the exception rather than the rule; ensuring that security arrangements for open visits are individually riskassessed; allowing prisoners meeting their children for an open visit to fully express their feelings physically, should they so desire, especially in Thiva Prison. 88 By contrast, at Thessaloniki Prison, women prisoners were offered open visits without them or their families being subjected to such searches.