Report on the Performance of Activities of the National Preventive Mechanism for 2017 1. PERSONS DEPRIVED OF LIBERTY AND THE FUNCTIONING OF THE NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM 1.1. THE PRISON SYSTEM Persons in the prison system are deprived of their liberty, but they still enjoy fundamental human rights enshrined by the Constitution, legal acts and international legal documents. Nonetheless, they are often subject to different restrictions during their stay in prison. When analysing their complaints, our basic task is to determine whether the restrictions and treatments on the basis of which they file their complaints are proportional to the reasons for The basic task is to determine whether the restrictions and treatments are proportional to the reasons for which they are implemented and whether they are crucial to achieve the goal as set by the law or, alternatively, whether they go beyond the inevitable suffering caused by deprivation of liberty. which they are implemented and whether they are crucial to achieve the goal as set by the law or, alternatively, whether they go beyond the inevitable suffering caused by deprivation of liberty. Unlike reactive approach to handling complaints, preventive visits of penal institutions that we make within the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) aim to strengthen the protection of persons deprived of liberty and prevention of torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. In 2017, we received 136 complaints, carried out 31 field investigative procedures and visited nine penal institutions. 1.1.1. Complaints filed by persons deprived of liberty in the prison system Most of the complaints addressed the quality of healthcare, treatment by officers and accommodation conditions. The fact that the majority of complaints filed to the Central Office of the Prison System and Probation Directorate with the Ministry of Justice (COPSPD) dealt with the same problems confirms the fact that these problems cause most dissatisfaction among prisoners1. In 2017, the number of complaints addressing the work of the treatment department was on the increase. In addition, prisoners complained about the effectiveness of legal protection and violation of their right to contact with the outside world. The nature of the complaints against the quality of healthcare, as indicated in our previous reports, did not change in 2017. Prisoners complain that doctors in certain penal institutions refuse to grant them access to their medical records or provide them with the copies. This was the case of the Pula prison, for example. In this chapter, the term COPSPD shall be used as an acronym to denote the administrative unit of the Croatian Ministry of Justice that, inter alia, manages administrative and professional affairs regarding the prison sentence serving, execution of remand imprisonment and the so-called educational measures of referral to the juvenile correctional institution (JCI), regardless of the date of the entry into force of the Regulation on Internal Structure of the Ministry of Justice (Official Gazette NN no. 98/17), amending its name and scope of work. 1 7