25 4. Methodology, resources and organization of NPM in 2016 1.1. NPM Methodology The role of NPM of Serbia activities is exclusively preventive. NPM does not oversee legality or regularity of the work of the competent authorities in certain cases, but instead, it timely informs the organizational unit of the Protector of Citizens acting upon complaints filed by persons deprived of their liberty. NPM of Serbia makes visits to institutions accommodating persons deprived of their liberty following the prearranged methodology. Methodology of the work of the Serbian NPM is based on the provisions of the Optional Protocol that set the NPM mandate for frequent visits to the institutions where persons are or may be deprived of their liberty. NPM methodology recognizes the following three types of visits: regular follow-up visits verifying the compliance with the recommendations, thematic and extraordinary (ad-hoc) visits. Visits may be announced and unannounced. The Serbian NPM Methodology pays special attention to conducting unannounced visits to the institutions where persons are or may be deprived of their liberty. Following the initial period, in which the objective determined under the Methodology was to pay regular visits to all institutions, the plan for the subsequent period was to increase the number of the follow-up visits. This enables monitoring of the status determined during the previous regular visits, particularly acting by competent authorities upon the NPM recommendations. The methodology of the NPM of Serbia is focused on follow-up visits to the institutions where persons deprived of their liberty are placed. When making preparations for the visits to institutions, the existing information are taken into consideration. The tasks are shared so that by rule, the visiting team is split into four thematic groups: the first one is to observe accommodation capacities (the group for observing accommodation conditions), the second one reviews the provision of legal protection in the institution (the legal group), the third reviews the treatments administered to the persons deprived of their liberty (the treatment group) while the fourth group examines the achievement of health care provided to individuals kept in the institutions (the health care group) In order to increase efficiency of collecting the relevant information during the visits, the working material is distributed to all the team members in advance (such as questionnaires, structure and templates of the parts of reports) serving as a guiding tool.