58 8. Reports of the NPM In addition to preventing torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the NPM’s recommendations are also aimed at improving the treatment and the conditions of placement of persons deprived of their liberty. Through the measures described in my reports on NPM visits, in addition to preventing torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, I also tried to facilitate the elimination of improprieties related to other fundamental rights of persons deprived of their liberty and the conditions and ways of treatment leading to them. The reports have to be clear as to what fundamental-rights-related impropriety or what circumstance threatening the enforcement of the fundamental rights affected the given measure is aimed at.146 These measures have to be formulated in a way making it possible to distinguish a measure with several addressees from several measures with the same addressee.147 In connection with my relevant reports, the Director-General of the General Directorate of Social Affairs and Child Protection, operator of the inspected children’s homes, voiced his concern that I had drawn conclusions and made recommendations merely based on the statement or allegation of one staff member or one resident of the inspected institution. According to the Director General, it is inappropriate to draw conclusions on the general practices of an institution based on the mere suspicion of infringement, it is necessary to examine the correlation between the circumstances, proceedings, and actions. He complained that, instead of inquiring into the truthfulness of the interviewed children’s allegations or into the phenomena giving cause for concern, my colleagues took them as facts and used them as the basis for recommendations.148 Addressing his concerns, I informed the Director General that the NPM’s primary task is not fact-finding, but preventing ill-treatment. My reports treated the allegations made by a single person not as facts, but as information giving cause for concern – I recommended the conduct of an internal investigation in order to clarify the situation. I initiated remedying the situation causing a fundamental-rights-related anomaly on the basis of pieces of information coming from at least two persons and confirming and strengthening each other.149 146 147 148 149 See Section 34, Subsection (2) of Normative Instruction 3/2015. (XI. 30.) AJB of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights on the professional rules and methods of his/her inquiries. See Section 34, Subsection (4) of Normative Instruction 3/2015. (XI. 30.) AJB of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights on the professional rules and methods of his/her inquiries. The letter of the Director General of the GDSACP, sent on July 14, 2016, under reference number SZGYF-IKT-6751-3/2016, may be found in the archives of my Office under file number AJB-3341-44/2016. My reply of August 25, 2016, may be found under file number AJB-3341-48/2016 in the archives of my Office.