The purpose of these illegal actions was to disrupt our communication with prisoners and the monitoring of the prison area. Similar cases occurred:  On October 31, 2020 and then again, on January 14, 2021 in Ksani Establishment N15, where a specific group of prisoners did not allow the Public Defender's representatives to monitor the application of the right to vote, and then to interview the institution's doctor. This is particularly troubling in the light of the fact that one of the inmates of Establishment N15 died a few days before with complications of Covid-19 and several family members of the inmates approached us with a request to visit the inmates.  On December 4, 2020 and on January 13, 2021, the same prisoner threatened the representatives of the Public Defender's Office in Gldani N8 Establishment and demanded to terminate the visit to the prison. Establishment N8 is a closed type of prison and it is noteworthy that this prisoner always moves to a specific area of the prison when our representatives are carrying out the visits.  On January 13, 2021, in Rustavi Establishment N17, a specific group of prisoners behaved aggressively with the representatives of the Public Defender, who also demanded the Public Defender to stop the visits because „everything was fine“in the prison. It's the impact of the so-called criminal subculture that, while about half of the inmates serve their sentences in semi-open establishments (N14, N15 and N17), the number of referrals and appeals from the mentioned institutions to the Public Defender decreases from year to year. For instance, out of 1384 applications received from inmates in 2020, only 57 were sent by inmates of the abovementioned three establishments. This confirms that many problems of prisoners unfortunately do not reach us and are not heard out due to the influence of the so called criminal subculture. Therefore our proactive work in the semi-open establishments is important. In order to resolve these issues the Public Defender referred to a number of state agencies to react. In addition to the abovementioned, the Public Defender provided information to the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) and the Council of Europe Committee on Prevention of Torture (CPT) asking them to carry out a visit to Georgia with the purpose of protection of the rights of inmates. The most important component of the mandate and methodology of the Special Prevention Group is the processing of voluminous information obtained from various documents in conformity with the principle of confidentiality. It is unfortunate that members of the special prevention group still face obstacles in terms of accessing special categories of personal data. In 2020, members of the Special Prevention Group were not allowed to study the unified electronic database in N6, N10 and N18 establishments, which was necessary for the Public Defender to assess the adequacy and timeliness of medical services. It should be noted that Article 20 (b) of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment explicitly obliges countries to ensure unimpeded access of the National Preventive Mechanism to all information regarding the treatment of detainees and conditions of detention. 12