Foreword The pandemic we have lived with since the beginning of the year has affected our society and daily life in a way that is unparalleled in modern times. Some groups have run the risk of suffering particularly hard by both the infection and the extraordinary measures taken by public agencies. The Parliamentary Ombudsmen’s mission to promote the rule of law and ensure that citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms are not violated has become of even greater importance under these circumstances. Among the groups at particular risk of suffering from the effects of the pandemic are people deprived of their liberty. They have little opportunity to influence their own life situations, are highly dependent on their respective institutions’ handling of the crisis and often live together in close proximity with limited opportunities for physical distancing. Among them are, for example, inmates in the Prison and Probation Service’s prisons and remand prisons, in the Swedish Migration Agency’s detention centres or in various homes for compulsory care in the social services. They also includes people who are subject to compulsory psychiatric care or forensic psychiatric care. In order to reduce the spread of Covid-19, many state and municipal agencies introduced various types of restrictions in the spring of 2020. These included restrictions on the opportunities for various groups deprived of their liberty to receive visits, be granted leave, and so on. In order to illustrate the situation for individuals deprived of their liberty during the pandemic and to prevent any unauthorised restrictions on their rights, we Ombudsmen decided that we, within our respective areas of responsibility, each carry out an investigation of an agency that deprives people of their liberty. The rapid spread of infections in the spring of 2020, as well as the strains the pandemic placed on much of our own work, also meant that we had to make special considerations in order to responsibly fulfil our mission as National Preventive Mechanism under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Tre- –3–