10 NPM has pointed out that the institutions in which the persons deprived of liberty are placed, that were visited by NPM team during the reporting period that were subsequently addressed with its recommendations, were highly cooperative and enabled the NPM to perform its assignment, as mandated by the established Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against torture (both announced and random visits to the detention centres were enabled, as well as the access to all the premises and installations, inspection of all the data including the interviews with all the prisoners, staff and any other persons selected by NPM). However, despite the significant steps towards the prevention of torture and other forms of abuse, including the improvement in the treatment of the prisoners, NPM points out that the internal control, prosecution offices and court instruments require much more improvement in terms of effective and efficient fight against torture. In this respect, it would be recommendable to fully harmonize the provisions of the Criminal Code with the definition of torture referred to in Article 1 of the UN Convention against torture. In the course of 2016, NPM visited a number of places where the persons deprived of liberty are placed, such as police stations, international reception centres for foreigners, detention units, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric institutions in public hospitals, social welfare institutions used as homes, asylum centres and reception centres for migrants. In acting upon the NPM recommendations, addressed with the aim to protect and warrant the rights of apprehended and detained persons, as well as to prevent their mistreatment by the police, the visited police departments hand over to the detainees the appropriate written notifications about the rights of the detained persons and maintain due records of detentions. Although the Instructions on treatment of the detained and brought in persons has still not changed, the police officers of individual police departments ceased with the practice of obligatory presence during medical checkups of all the detained persons, but rather attend only at the request of a doctor, for security reasons. The files formed upon detention of persons no longer include the medical records of the persons while the information about the health condition of the detained person are available to the police officers only to the extent relevant for the treatment of that person upon his/her detention. A number of detention premises in police stations still do not comply with present standards in terms of material conditions and the recommendations of NPM to improve the conditions in certain detention premises was predominantly not acted upon, stating unacceptable reasons – the lack of material and technical conditions. NPM has found that the Ministry of Interior failed to organize appropriate trainings for police officers in each police department in the Republic of Serbia about the treatment of mentally impaired persons. Taking into account the significance of having additional prevention and protection measures against abuse of persons deprived of their liberty, recording of information received from citizens (the interviews) and hearing of suspects, the Ministry of Interior