IV Further activities of the National Agency 1 Specialist associations and public relations work The National Agency also made efforts in 2012 to expand its specialist connections and to further publicise the activity of the Agency. In 2012, the Federal Agency spotlighted the topic of the “monitoring of returns by air”. Several meetings took place on this topic, which are detailed at II.2. At the invitation of the Chairman of the Bundestag’s Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, Tom Koenigs, the Director of the Federal Agency attended a Committee meeting, where he also explained the Federal Agency’s current situation. This particularly referred to the inadequate staffing and finances. The members of the Joint Commission continued in 2012 to focus their activities, amongst other things, on networking and exchange with psychiatric visiting commissions of the Länder. To this end, meetings took place with the Chairman of the psychiatric visiting commission for Cologne, with the Chairman of the Lower Saxony Psychiatric Committee, as well as with members of the psychiatric visiting commission for Hamburg. Amongst other things, there was a discussion of the potential for cooperation between the bodies. At the invitation of the German Institute for Human Rights, the National Agency furthermore attended specialist talks on the recommendations of the UN Committee against Torture, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which took place in Berlin in May 2012. The recommendations of the CAT, the CPT and the Working Group, as well as their concrete implementation, were discussed at the event. It was attended amongst others by two members of the CPT, representatives of the Federal Government, of individual Land Governments, as well as of many non-governmental organisations. Furthermore, articles in specialist periodicals and lectures continued to form part of the National Agency’s public relations work this year. Worth mentioning here, amongst other things, are an article by the then Chairman of the Joint Commission, Prof. Geiger, together with Ms Schöner in the “Forum Strafvollzug”31, as well as a lecture by Ms Schöner at the conference of the Federal Working Party of Doctors and Psychologists in May 2012. 31 Geiger, Hansjörg/ Schöner, Elsava (2012), Präventiver Menschenschutz. Die Nationale Stelle zur Verhütung von Folter. In: Forum Strafvollzug, 61st year, Vol. 3, pp. 136-140. 88