Report on the Performance of Activities of the National Preventive Mechanism for 2015 Treatment by judicial police We still continue to receive complaints in which prisoners claim that judicial police officers offend and belittle them and call them by derogatory names, and that they even slap them on the face, which is indicative of possible degrading treatment. As a rule, these are complaints that are very hard to confirm as well-founded, because such actions occur at places without video surveillance or witnesses, but it is precisely the officers’ actions that are the most common reason for complaints to heads of penal institutions and to the COPSD, according to data available to us. Correspondence During the previous year, prisoners have contacted us claiming that their complaints filed to the Ombudswoman and letters addressed to state bodies and institutions had not been sent from the penal institutions. Due to the method of recording submittal of letters we were unable to confirm or disconfirm their allegations. Given that the sending of petitions and complaints to government bodies and other public bodies and the subsequent obtaining of a response is a constitutional right, penal institutions need to set up and keep records that allow for clear determination of the time when and the person to whom the letter was handed over. Should it be adopted, the proposed amendment to the Criminal Procedure Act (hereinafter: CPA), pursuant to which prisoners on remand would be able to file a complaint to the Ombudswoman and receive her response without any limitation or supervision, would speed up the process of filing complaints and contribute to strengthening of the protection of their rights. 2.2. Complaints filed by citizens with regard to work of the police during the act of deprivation of one’s liberty Complaints filed by citizens with regard to actions of police officers during deprivation of one’s liberty mostly pertained to unprofessional and unethical conduct, overstepping one’s authority and biased and selective treatment. In any treatment that involves the use of physical strength and that results in deprivation of one’s liberty, police officers are obligated to invest the maximum level of due care to preserve the dignity of the person at whom such treatment is aimed, keeping in mind that, in the event of error, such treatment represents a violation of the citizens’ constitutional rights. For example, when persons are made to lie with their face down on the ground, in front of a group of observing citizens or journalists, and when video recordings of such treatmen t are posted on the website of the Ministry of the Interior without protecting the identity of the person in the video, this can certainly represent degrading treatment. In the case of Bouyid vs. Belgium (2015), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that for 5