Situation at Penitentiary Establishments regard. They successfully managed to study the specifics of the new activities in these Establishments in a shortest period and managed to generate trust among prisoners.8 The same does not apply to the new management of Rustavi N17 and N6 Establishments. As it turns out it was more difficult for them to deal with the new tasks and communicate with prisoners since they were under the influence of old staff. It was proved by the above mentioned incident that took place at the Establishment N6. In the middle of October 2012, the MCLA disseminated the information about the approval of the list of persons who were granted the right to enter the prisons/places of restriction functioning under the Penitentiary Department without any special permission. The National Preventive Mechanism of Public Defender of Georgia approved this decision and meanwhile believed that the transparency of the penitentiary system and increase of the public accessibility was of crucial importance for the system improvement and prevention of ill-treatment and other human rights violations. Furthermore, authorities were encouraged to define the specific competences of members of public commission in the shortest possible period, mechanisms for of obtaining information and providing relevant replies. On this background the public monitoring system has been temporarily developed as an equal alternative of the national preventive Mechanism of Public Defender. During special monitoring, representatives of Public Defender Office paid special attention to the Parliamentary Elections process taking place on October 1st, 2012. Therefore the visits were undertaken to the Establishments with the polling stations as well as places where the voting was process took place through mobile ballot boxes, immediately on 1 October. Monitoring results proved that the voting process at penitentiary establishments went smoothly, the administration has not exercised any pressure towards prisoners with voting rights and prisoners were free to make their choice. The convicts considering themselves as political prisoners declared the same. Notwithstanding, the shortcomings of social services at the penitentiary system, being continuously pointed out by Public Defender in his reports, were once again revealed in 2012. Considerable number of convicts was unable to vote because of the lack of IDs. The social service responsible for taking care of such problems failed to register prisoners without IDs and undertake relevant procedures needed to make the IDs. Prisoners in some establishments declared that they were not aware of their right to vote with a defendant status. Information of the prisoners on the given issues also falls under the competence of social services. Parliamentary elections of 1 October, 2012 resulted in the complete replacement of the cabinet of ministers. On October 19th, the former Public Defender, Sozar Subar was appointed as the Minister of MCLA. Simultaneously, authorities were replaced in several other institutions. In general, the process was undertaken in a peaceful manner. The new director started to exercise the old methods from the very first day of his appointment. Some unfair restrictions were applied – they were not allowed to: go to church, dry their clothes in the cells even though there was no special place allocated for this purpose. According to convicts, the new director was threatening prisoners with the sentence prolongation and calling forces of special destination. They admitted to be punished and transferred to the solitary confinement cells without grounds. In addition to all the above referred, the convicts noted that the new director, Levan Aburjania has beaten and “slipped drugs in the pockets” of some of the prisoners at Establishment N16 while working as a police officer. According 8 Although after the change in the Ministry leadership the said directors left positions. NPM Report 2012 The only unfortunate exception was Rustavi Establishment N16, where the director was once again changed on October 29th. This change triggered dissatisfaction of prisoners. On October 31st, the representatives of the Preventive and Monitoring Mechanism of Public Defender’s Office visited and interviewed majority of the convicts at Establishment N16. The convicts handed collective letters of complaints signed by hundreds of prisoners to Public Defender representatives. According to prisoners, a new director was appointed in the mentioned Establishment on October 29th, 2012.