this group of persons. At the same time, mental illness creates a particular challenge to caretakers, as the capability of these persons to comprehend and verbalise their disorder is frequently impaired. Therefore, persons employed in social institutions and facilities must address these psychiatric conditions, learn to understand them and find individual responses to behaviours to which they had previously not had a connection. As a result, situations arise during their day-today work that often overwhelm them. Emphasising their mandate to prevent violence, the commissions have found that deficits in care result in crises that sometimes lead to very dramatic physical assaults on other residents and staff. It is by no means rare that these persons, who require intensive care, are passed on from facility to facility and in the process lose their support systems again and again, producing and exacerbating hospitalisation effects. This is the consequence of the lack of an environment with person-centred care and therapeutic support by qualified staff. If institutions and facilities are not successful in finding adequate resources and preventing these escalations, this can have fatal consequences, which must then be borne by the persons with disabilities who are thus cheated of opportunities for development and happiness. For example, Commission 1 encountered a 15-year-old in the forensic ward at the Hall Regional Hospital (Tyrol), who was being detained as a mentally ill prisoner after a physical assault on a caregiver. He had already spent half his life in institutions where impulse outbursts were practically a daily occurrence. His conviction under criminal law had been preceded by court proceedings under the Nursing and Residential Homes Residence Act, during which the representative of the residents repeatedly called for person-centred 1:1 support and suspension of measures restricting freedom. Despite the foreseeable risks, intensive, individualised support was not provided. Violence as a consequence of unsuitable conditions In the course of its monitoring activities, the NPM found that Landspecific requirements and the funding formulas derived from them with regard to quality of infrastructure diverge substantially and this is being approached differently in fundamental issues. For example, the required staffing ratio for institutions and facilities for persons with disabilities across Austria differs significantly. While this ratio in Styria is as high as 100%, other Laender, for example Salzburg, consider a 50% employment of qualified staff is sufficient to meet the minimum standards. When basic framework conditions diverge so substantially Austria-wide, it is inevitable that there are differences in treatment and care of persons with disabilities depending on the place of residence or the facility to which they are assigned. In the light of the fulfilment of human rights guarantees provided in international treaties, this is unacceptable. Different quality requirements in the After the official country review of Austria within the scope of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the UN Research study on empowerment and 69 Laender