Report on the Performance of Activities of the National Preventive Mechanism for 2015 Number of persons deprived of their liberty (PDLs) who are older than 60 years of age, according to the conditions they are kept in and their status (information obtained from COPSD) Conditions Number of PDLs on 31 Dec 2015 TOTAL Older than 60 years of age PDLs according to age groups Status High security Medium security Minimum security Prisoners Prisoners on remand Misdemeanour offenders / Detainees 238 164 51 23 197 38 3 60 - 70 198 141 38 19 164 31 3 70 - 80 36 20 12 4 31 5 0 over 80 4 3 1 0 2 2 0 Generally speaking, conditions in penal institutions are adapted to younger prisoners, who comprise most of the prison population. Programs in the prison system have also been developed having in mind the needs of generally young persons. In elderly prisoners there is higher frequency of a series of health issues, for example cardiovascular diseases, dementia, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, loss of hearing and vision, and some prisoners also require special care, which increases the demands imposed on the prison system. Also, chronological age and health condition of the prisoners are not often analogous, with a fifty-year-old prisoner’s health condition quite probably being more similar to that of a sixty-year-old who is not imprisoned, which results in greater need of healthcare. Furthermore, when speaking of elderly prisoners, one should keep in mind also the difficulties connected with accommodation conditions, because a large number of stairs, difficulties connected with sanitary facilities, overcrowding, excessive heat or cold or alike can make the fulfilment of their basic needs more difficult. In the Republic of Croatia, elderly citizens are accommodated with the general population and not in a specially adapted ward, which is something that should be changed in the future. For example, since the end of 2015 in Slovenia there has been a specially adapted ward intended for accommodation of prisoners who require additional healthcare due to age, sickness or disability. Legal framework Although the Annual Normative Activities Plan for 2015 prescribed the adoption of a new EPSA, it has not been adopted, and according to available information, not even the drafting has begun. Provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act that regulate the execution of remand imprisonment and treatment of prisoners are dated and flawed and they should be included in the amendments that are currently under way. This situation is surely not good because a great number of shortcomings or limitations of rights of persons deprived of their liberty who are in the prison system result precisely from the shortcomings of the normative framework. 27