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rules had been amended. He would provide an empty office to the patients’ rights representative for
performing his/her tasks. The staff would brief the patients on the person and tasks of the patients’
rights representative and display the schedule of the latter’s availability on the FPMI’s notice board. I
recommended to the Director General of the National Center for Patients’ Rights and Documentation
to ensure that the patients’ rights representative of the FPMI performed his/her tasks in accordance
with the relevant legal provisions. The head of the Integrated Legal Protection Service of the Ministry
of Human Capacities (legal successor of the National Center for Patients’ Rights and Documentation)
made the arrangements to ensure that the patients’ rights representatives paid special attention to
protecting the rights of psychiatric patients treated in the FPMI, and revised the relevant professional
rules of procedure. He promised to ensure that the patients’ rights representative would regularly visit
the FPMI and be present and available during consulting hours.
The catering practices of the FPMI were not in compliance either with the legal provisions regulating
food service to be provided in inpatient institutions, or the lifestyles, health conditions of the regular
and sent-in patients; I requested the Chief Medical Director of the FPMI and the Chief Medical Officer
to take the necessary measures. In the wake of my recommendation as regards catering to the patients,
the inspection conducted by the Public Health Department of the Government Office of the Capital
City Budapest also established that the FPMI was in violation of the relevant food service regulations
and compelled the institution to eliminate the anomalies.
There was a disabled person in administrative detention 205 in the FPMI who, under the Act on
Administrative Offenses, should not have been held there. 206 In order to remedy the situation, I
initiated proceedings for the supervision of legality by the competent prosecutor through the
Prosecutor General. According to the Prosecutor General’s response, the inquiries of the competent
prosecutor did not uncover any factor hindering execution under Section 433(3)b) of the Prison
Code.207 In my response, I called the attention of the prosecution service to the fact that the detainee’s
being in in-patient care is also a factor excluding the application of administrative detention. Pursuant
to Section 1 of the FPMI Decree, penitentiary service physicians may send persons in administrative
detention to the FPMI only based on symptoms indicative of mental incompetence or disease of the
nervous system, for the purpose of treatment or examination. Pursuant to Section 2(1) of the FPMI
Decree, the FPMI shall, as an in-patient healthcare institution, examine, observe, and, if necessary, treat
patients sent in for observation of their mental state [Paragraph e)], as well as conduct the psychiatric
and neurological examination and treatment of patients sent in by penitentiary service physicians
[Paragraph f)]. In the case of persons in administrative detention, there is an obstacle to execution;
therefore, they cannot be treated in the FPMI. I am going to lay special emphasis on this issue during a
future follow-up inspection in the FPMI.
The visit’s experience shows that the conditions necessary for terminating compulsory treatment, i.e., a
protective environment, are guaranteed to an ever-decreasing extent. Due to the small number of social
care institutions, and in the absence of receiving families, both the issue of adaptive leaves for patients
under compulsory treatment and the release of those who did not need such treatment anymore
became unsolved. I requested the Minister of Justice to consider, in cooperation with the Ministers of
Interior and Human Capacities, the establishment of an inter-professional working group for
remedying the systemic problems specified in my report.
Section 4a) of Act XXVI of 1998 on the Rights and Equal Opportunities of Persons with Disabilities: “a person living with disability is a
person who lives, either for a prolonged period or permanently, with a sensory, communication, physical, mental, psycho-social impairment or their combination,
which, when interacting with environmental, social, other any other factors, hinders or prevent the given person from efficiently and equally participating in society.”
206 Section 10a) of Act II of 2012 Act II of 2012 on offences, the procedure in relation to offences and the offence record system: “No
administrative detention may be ordered if the person subject to proceedings is a person living with disability as defined in the Act on the rights and equal
opportunities of persons with disabilities, or receives in-patient care”
207 „Administrative detention may not be enforced if (...) there is a circumstance excluding the imposition of administrative detention.”
205
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