Report of the Human Rights Defender on the activities of the National Preventive Mechanism in Poland in 2012 2. Prisons and pre-trial detention centres 2.1 Introduction Year 2012 was devoted to thematic visits to penitentiary units. The purpose of the visits was to examine the observance of the rights of prisoners serving the penalty of imprisonment in the therapeutic system for inmates with non-psychotic mental disorders, and the rights of remand prisoners. According to the annual schedule, visits covered a total of 24 penitentiary units, including 20 prisons and 4 pre-trial detention centres. In two of the establishments, visits were intended to check if the NPM recommendations issued following previous controls were introduced. As the NPM has an insufficient number of experts in psychology, who are necessary for evaluating the operation of therapeutic wards, at its disposal, out of the 14 planned thematic visits to units with such wards only 11 were strictly thematic visits. The thematic visits will continue in 2013. 2.2 Systemic problems The visits allowed identifying general problems resulting from imperfections of the law that regulates the rights and obligations of people deprived of their liberty. The major imperfections are: 1. Overpopulation of penitentiary units. The Human Rights Defender, who plays the role of the NPM, highlighted the problem of overpopulation of penitentiary units, which has not been solved yet. The undesirable phenomenon of ‘hiding’ overpopulation arises from applying practices that are inappropriate in the view of the NPM representatives, but are nonetheless admitted by the law. Community rooms continue to be adapted for residential cells,30 and the number of residential cells includes patient rooms adapted for residential purposes; the stay of some inmates in transition cells is extended; sometimes 30 According to statistical data, thanks to adapting community rooms the Prison Service managed to create the following numbers of places for inmates: in January 2013 – 2,566; in February 2013 – 2,612; and in March 2013 – 2,783. 24