Attendance at domestic meetings and conferences 4. Attendance at domestic meetings and conferences The participation in conferences is an opportunity for the representatives of the NPM to raise social awareness about freedom from torture and inhuman treatment. On 20 January and 27 March 2012, a representative of the NPM delivered a lecture for the students of the Institute for Social Prevention and Resocialisation at the University of Warsaw, as part of the seminar on fundamental human rights and freedoms. During the working meeting held at the Police Training Centre in Legionowo6 with the Plenipotentiaries for the Human Rights Protection working at the Voivodeship Headquarters and the Warsaw Headquarters of the Police, which focused on exchanging experience in broadly understood human rights protection, the representative of the Mechanism presented the rules of operation of the NPM and the role of preventive visits. The analyses being the result of the work of the Human Rights Defender as the National Preventive Mechanism were presented to the participants of two meetings organised by the Ministry of Justice. During the first meeting, the representative of the NPM discussed the issues related to execution of verdicts in penal proceedings finished with custodial sentences and the observance of the rights of inmates. At the second meeting, the representatives of the Human Rights Defender presented the methodology of work of the NPM representatives, international standards binding for penitentiary establishments, general motions of the Human Rights Defender concerning custodial sentences and temporary detention. They also presented a report entitled Places of detention in the light of reports of penitentiary judges on example of 10 reports from visits to penitentiary establishments and rooms for detained persons. The following issues pointed to the superficial nature of the reports: – ignoring the “human factor”, i.e. prisoners, detained persons, during the verification of individual aspects covered by the visit of a  penitentiary judge; – underestimating the role of cultural and educational classes, which are particularly important in view of the decrease in employment and the constant growth of the number of inmates; – insufficient information about the population of inmates in penitentiary establishments in the cases when the capacity of the visited place has been exceeded; 26 January 2012. 6 11