50 THE GREEK OMBUDSMAN 5. Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment 5.a. General annual findings After the experience of more than 25 years of application of the provisions of Law 2071/1992 on involuntary hospitalisation, a commonplace problem is the inappropriate implementation in practice of the provisions set up to safeguard the rights of the allegedly mentally ill. The provisions of Law 2071/1992 have repeatedly led the Supreme Court Prosecutor's Office to issue reports and opinions23 and the European Court of Human Rights to issue rulings against our country24. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged that the only provision of the law on psychiatric care is through involuntary hospitalisation, without any substantial capacity to provide and develop psychiatric care in the community, has increased the number of involuntary hospitalisations in closed-type structures. The key findings from the NPM's data are rather disappointing as far as the effectiveness of law enforcement is concerned: the overwhelming majority of cases are tried without the presence of the person concerned, in most cases the person has not been summoned as a patient, and legal remedy is very rarely exercised against the decision ordering involuntary hospitalization. The above should be considered in combination with the everyday life experiences in public prosecution offices and psychiatric hospitals, especially in large urban centres: relatives request the prosecutor to deal with and initiate involuntary hospitalisation, he then issues a public prosecutor's order for examination, the police take over, the alleged patient is taken by patrol to a psychiatric clinic for examination. Involuntary hospitalisation prolongs the use of restrictive measures (protective bedlinen/bed restraint primarily) on patients due to staff shortages, lack of proper staff training and lack of strict criteria for the use of patient-restraint methods following international standards. 23 Areopag Prosecutor: Opinion 12/2006, Order 1421/19.9.2004, Circular 504/13.2.1996 24 Decisions “Venios vs Greece” (5.7.2011), “Karamanof vs Greece” (26.7.2011)