FOREWORD The National Agency for the Prevention of Torture is the body responsible in Germany for ensuring humane conditions of detention and treatment in places where people are deprived of their liberty. It presents an annual activity report to the Federal Government, the German Bundestag, the Land governments and the Land parliaments. The Annual Report 2015 covers the period from 1 January to 31 December 2015. The number of members of the Joint Commission was doubled at the beginning of 2015. This represented a significant step for the Commission, as it signalled the go-ahead for visits in areas of its remit which it had previously not been able to visit, or only infrequently, most especially residential care homes and nursing homes for the elderly, psychiatric clinics and youth welfare facilities. Unlike those facilities it has visited in the past, some of the facilities in the aforementioned areas are privately run. The legal prerequisites for publishing the reports of the Joint Commission’s visits to privately-run facilities citing their name are still being examined at present. The findings and recommendations made by the National Agency in the course of its visits are summarised in this Annual Report. The detailed reports of all its visits and the responses of the supervisory authorities are available on the National Agency’s website. The National Agency takes positive stock overall of its visits and activities in 2015: Many of the recommendations made by the Federal Agency and the Joint Commission have already been implemented. Nevertheless, in many cases these recommendations are still only being implemented in the facilities visited and not at regional or national level. In the coming year the National Agency will, therefore, again step up its efforts to publish and disseminate its recommendations to achieve the long-term objective of the most extensive nationwide implementation possible. 7