and medical and technical equipment which must be complied with by all health institutions or their units for specialist-consultative and hospital treatment in the field of psychiatry which carry out involuntary confinement and involuntary placement of persons with mental disorders. 3.4. Legal protection of persons deprived of their liberty In accordance with the regulations in force, several legal instruments are available to persons deprived of their liberty held in the prison system. Filing a complaint to the head of the prison, the Central Office of the Prison System Directorate or to the executing judge are surely those from which prisoners expect the most in the protection of their rights. However, the data we collected in 2013 by acting in accordance with the Ombudsman's Act and the ANPM, which are indicative of failure to act upon the filed legal instruments, bring into question their effectiveness. Namely, it often happens that a prisoner did not receive a response to his/her filed complaint within the prescribed period of fifteen, that is, thirty days. For example, in the procedure following a prisoner's complaint, it was established that he submitted a complaint to the Central Office on 16 September 2012, and received a response on 1 October 2013. Consequently, instead within the prescribed period of thirty days, the complainant received a response after more than one year. The issue of questionable effectiveness of legal instruments is also illustrated by more than 200 final decisions from executing judges on the violation of rights in terms of the accommodation conditions referred to in Article 74 of the EPSA in Lepoglava State Prison. Despite the fact that everyone in the Republic of Croatia must respect and comply with a final and enforceable i.e. executable judicial decision, these prisoners are still serving their prison sentence in the same conditions. Taking account of all of the above, it is justified to ask whether this is actually an efficient legal instrument? With regard to the protection of the rights of prisoners, we also have to mention Article 47 of the EPSA, which prescribes that the executing judge must visit prisoners at least once a year, talk with them and instruct them about their rights under the EPSA and ways to realise those rights. According to the information received from the Central Office, in 2013 not a single executing judge visited Šibenik State Prison, Šibenik County Prison, Glina State Prison, Lipovica Popovača State Prison and Prison Hospital. Prisoners frequently complain that they never talked with the executing judge over the course of several years, because he/she does not talk with all prisoners during the visit. Similarly, prisoners often contact us because of the executing judge's failure to act upon the submitted request for judicial protection. This is also facilitated by the fact that no period is prescribed by the EPSA in which the judge must issue a decision on the justifiability of the request for legal protection. 4. Conclusion and recommendations