Observations of the NPM on the prevention of torture and other ill-treatment Report on injury reports on people deprived of their liberty 69. In year 2014, the NPM prepared its first theme report: the report on Injury reports on people deprived of their liberty, registered with the Parliament on 27 May 2014, and submitted by the Ombudsman to the Mixed Committee of Relations with the Ombudsman’s Office of the Parliament on 17 June 2014. At the visits made by the Ombudsman’s Office as NPM to places of deprivation of liberty, it has been observed, in the review of the injury reports by external experts, specialists in legal and forensic medicine, in psychiatry and in psychology, that the type, share, size, exact location and other features of the injury that could permit the manner in which it occurred to be established are often not adequately described. In certain cases, it has even been observed that the injury reports do not describe the manner in which the injured person states that they occurred, so that it is impossible to verify the consistency of the statement made by the person deprived of liberty with the observations made by the medical practitioner. 70. Given the importance of this matter, the Ombudsman’s Office considered it advisable to prepare a report. For such purpose, it firstly obtained information on State and autonomous community law regulating the issue of injury reports, and on the standard forms of injury reports used in each territory. Later a retreat was held to analyse the results of the work carried out at the previous stage, at which various experts on the matter participated (judges, forensic medical practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists, medical practitioners and jurists). Although problems and deficiencies were detected both at the basic and emergency healthcare levels and in the subsequent investigation that should be carried out by the forensic medical practitioner, at the request of the court authority, the NPM focused its attention on the first level of healthcare, which is that afforded to the person deprived of liberty when he has suffered, or states that he has suffered, ill-treatment or tortures. 71. The result of this work was the preparation of the report on Injury reports on people deprived of their liberty, which analyses injury reports in the Spanish legal and healthcare system, making recommendations for their unification and defining the minimum set of data that they should contain in the case of persons deprived of liberty, to comply with the international obligations agreed by Spain on the matter and to facilitate the court investigation. 43

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