and staff should have clarity as to what rights are had by people placed there and which disciplinary measures may be applied if the rules of order and security are violated. However, continuous modifications of the rules and unsurety translate into unfavourable relations among patients and NCPDB employees, which also distorts therapeutic process. Moreover, according to patients, the Rules and Regulations are changed without their participation, often for reasons which are incomprehensible to them, and often on the next day. This is perceived by patients as a manifestation of persecution and application of collective responsibility for some people’s misdemeanours. This creates further therapeutic constraints, may cause resistance and negativism in patients, along with confrontative behaviour which makes it difficult to conduct an effective therapy. Apart from that, in the above mentioned opinion Ryszard Piotrowski, PhD, points out that frequent modifications of the Rules and Regulations and introduction of numerous Amendments undermine their importance as a standard and point to a lack of coherence between the concept of the facility operation and the provisions of the Act on handling individuals suffering from mental disorders which cause risk of life, health or sexual freedom of other individuals and the Ordinance setting out detailed terms and procedures of rendering healthcare services to persons placed in the National Centre for the Prevention of Dissocial Behaviours. ☞ According to the NMPT, a need arises to amend the currently appliable Act in the scope of detailed definition of the rights and obligations of NCPDB patients. Those issues must not be defined in the facility’s internal Rules and Regulations which are subject to constant modifications. Legality of stay The NMPT raises doubts about the legality of stay at NCPDB of a mentally ill person, which has already been pointed out in the section concerning referral to the facility. Moreover, during the visit, there were 5 patients who were placed in the facility under the so called temporary security measure pursuant to the Code of Civil Procedure. The measure results from Article 2(3) of the Act of 22 November 2013. In these cases no valid judgment has been rendered yet which would regard those patients as dangerous, but their prison sentences have already ended. One has to remember that in such case the Act also provides for a measure which is alternative to imprisonment, such as e.g. preventive surveillance (without detention at the Centre). The choice of measures is decided by a civil court. In this context it is worth, however, to point out that on 30 January 2019 the Supreme Court issued a resolution in which it was pointed out clearly that, unless relevant provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure concerning security measures apply in the proceedings opened based on the Act of 22 November 2013, it is unacceptable to apply a security measure in the form of placement of a per- Report of the Commissioner for Human Rights on the activities of the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture in Poland in 2019 49