freedom and occasionally also assisting in nursing and care tasks. Subsequently, the Supreme Court also did not approve of these practices. Private security companies are neither entitled nor authorised to participate in attaching restraints, even on the orders of the attending hospital staff. The Supreme Court also qualified all measures requiring close body contact to patients, for example, holding them in order to prevent them from leaving the ward, as prohibited. security services Upper Austria and Vienna have provided the NPM with written assurances that case law will be taken into account; they have also taken the necessary measures. The Standard Operating Procedure in Otto Wagner Hospital has also been revised in this regard. Commission 4 was informed that this hospital is considering setting up a specially trained, in-house nursing care crisis team to replace private security company services. This would further reduce the necessity of deploying private security personnel in the wards. This model is favoured by the employees of the psychiatric hospital; it was explicitly endorsed by the NPM in advance of the decision-making process. After a visit over several days in fall 2014, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) gave recommendations in the field of psychiatry in its report to the Federal Government (CPT/Inf [2015] 34) – as it had done already in 2009. The NPM does not only support these recommendations, but considers them absolutely essential. It believes that there are still reservations and opposition to these recommendations due to the associated additional costs. CPT recommendations 2015 For example, the CPT repeated that restrained patients must be continuously and directly supervised in the form of a permanent and direct supervision by a member of the medical staff. The direct interpersonal contact with patients is intended to calm them down and to reduce feelings of fear. Such assistance can consist of, for example, accompanying patients to the toilet or helping them drink or eat despite being restrained. In the opinion of the CPT, it is therefore not sufficient to depend exclusively on monitoring cameras. Permanent and direct supervision when patients are restrained The commissions found that this recommendation by the CPT is largely not being followed and that insufficient personnel resources are given as the reason. The NPM cannot accept the non-compliance with the protection of human dignity in a coercive context that is required in accordance with human rights. In this respect it must be emphasised that the practice observed by the commissions of caring for patients in beds set up in hallways and the visibility of means of restraint are a glaring violation of human rights standards and not acceptable. It is intolerable for patients that they can be observed by an uninvolved third-party while they are restrained, which de facto cannot be avoided, specifically when beds are placed in hallways. Underlying capacity constraints are also a clear violation of Section 1 (1) of the Hospitalisation of Mentally Ill Persons Act, which Beds in the hallways and visible restraints 47