CAT/C/ROU/CO/2 (f) Ensure that all persons suspected of having committed physical or psychological torture or ill-treatment and wilful negligence are prosecuted and, if found guilty, punished in accordance with the gravity of their acts and provide information to the Committee on the number, type and outcome of such cases; (g) Establish an independent mechanism to deal with inmates’ complaints about their conditions of detention and treatment, provide effective follow-up to such complaints for the purpose of remedial action and ensure that inmates who file complaints are not subjected to reprisals; (h) Ensure that the Ombudsman acting as the national preventive mechanism and other independent bodies are able to regularly visit all places of detention and to exercise their functions effectively. Situation in psychiatric wards, psychiatric hospitals and specialized psychiatric institutions, for persons with mental disabilities 14. The Committee is gravely concerned at: (a) The treatment and living conditions of persons with mental disabilities, both adults and minors, in psychiatric wards, psychiatric hospitals and specialized psychiatric institutions, which have reportedly resulted in numerous deaths of patients owing to neglect, lack of basic care, the use of mechanical restraints, the denial of medical and psychological treatment, and severe malnutrition amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment; (b) The absence of investigations into the reported deaths of 16 patients at Poiana Mare Psychiatric Hospital, of several hundred patients between 2001 and 2004 and of some 2,000 persons between January 2011 and August 2014 in institutions for persons with mental disabilities in approximately half of the country, owing to extremely bad living conditions and inferior medical treatment, such as always being kept in dark rooms and sedated, being tied with ligatures to their beds and fed while lying on their backs, being fed insufficient and inadequate food and being screamed at, beaten and denied life-saving external medical treatment, resulting in serious medical or psychological stress, as was the case with patients at the Gheorghe Serban Centre for Neuropsychiatric Recuperation and Rehabilitation; (c) The absence of legal capacity of patients and of legal safeguards regarding explicit consent for placement and medical treatment in psychiatric institutions, combined with the absence in files of official decisions on placement, which amount to forced institutionalization and forced medical treatment; (d) The absence of judicial review in respect of the initial placement and the continued stay of mental health patients in psychiatric institutions, which amounts to unlawful and indefinite detention but is nevertheless designated as “voluntary” by circumventing provisions in the mental health legislation and preventing the right of appeal; (e) The high numbers of persons with psychosocial disabilities and of mental health institutions, which reflect lack of progress in the transition from institutional care to community-based care and family centres (arts. 2, 11, 12, 13, 15 and 16). The State party should: (a) Amend the legislation in order to provide persons with mental and psychosocial disabilities with the right to legal capacity and to ensure the effective supervision and monitoring by judicial organs of any placement in psychiatric hospitals and institutions of persons with mental and psychosocial disabilities, ensure the patient’s right to be heard in person by the judge ordering the hospitalization and 7