official, as well as any place that a person is not free to leave without a decision or permission of a court or an administrative or other authority or official. After entry into force of the Republic of Armenia Constitutional Law on the Human Rights Defender, an effective mechanism has been adopted on the basis of the internationally-accepted principles for the Defender to combine the functions of the National Preventive Mechanism and the Ombudsman. The examination of individual complaints and the ex officio examination of issues by the various subdivisions of the Staff of the Human Rights Defender reveals the problems related to specific situations in places of deprivation of liberty, while the monitoring by the Department for the Prevention of Torture and Ill-Treatment allows examining the whole system irrespective of the existence of complaints. Moreover, the individual cases that transpire during the monitoring are transferred to the subdivision that examines them and vice versa— systemic issues that are revealed through individual complaints are presented to the subdivision responsible for the preventive mechanism, thereby ensuring a flexible system for information sharing. To safeguard the performance of the National Preventive Mechanism’s functions, a standalone subdivision—the Department for the Prevention of Torture and Ill-Treatment—operates within the Staff of the Human Rights Defender. The Department engages in its activities lawyers, as well as a doctor. The Defender has engaged in the work of the preventive mechanism certain independent experts from the academia and nongovernmental organizations (a psychologist, a sociologist, and doctors, including a psychiatrist). The monitoring related to places of deprivation of liberty is carried out using special methodology and on the basis of guidelines developed specifically for such monitoring. The information and documents collected by representatives of the National Preventive Mechanism in the course of the monitoring visits are analyzed and compared to the legislative framework on the sector in order to reveal practical problems as well as legislative regulation gaps and shortcomings. 8