The Public Defender welcomes legal regulation of the matter and views adoption of the system of assessment and periodic re-assessment of risks of convicts clearly a step forward. However, he considers it necessary to change the rules so as to introduce legal guarantees for protecting the rights of convicts, in the course of risk assessment. In the first place, it is worth noting that under Article 4 of Order №70 of 9 July 2015 issued by the Ministry of Corrections, initial assessment of risk of convicts by a team and distribution of convicts in establishments, according to the risk level by the director of the penitentiary establishment must be completed no later than 1 January 2017. However, according to the information provided by the Ministry of Corrections, only an insignificant part of risk assessments was completed. There is a risk of failure to manage assessing the risk of convicts within the above mentioned time-frame. This process will be conducted in a hurry and will most likely cause infringement of interests of convicts. It is important that the Ministry of Corrections takes all measures to ensure that assessment of risks of convicts is not speeded up and the rights of convicts are protected. Article 15 of these rules envisages providing information to the convict about the decision of the multidisciplinary team about the risk level, when leaving the convict in the same establishment for deprivation of liberty or in case of transfer to another establishment. It also requires providing the decision and case materials, based on a written request. Article 17 envisages the possibility of challenging the decision of the multidisciplinary team by a convict. However, it is worth noting that the rule does not require involvement of the convict in the process of decision-making by the team. The Public Defender regards it necessary to oblige the penitentiary establishment or penitentiary department to inform the convict about the initiation of the process of assessing the risk of danger he/she poses by the multidisciplinary team. Besides, the convict must have the right to present additional documentation to the multidisciplinary team at any stage of examination of his/her case, if he/she thinks that it may lead to a desirable decision. Under Article 6 (1) of the Rules, the process of assessing the risk of danger starts with examining information about the convict. For this purpose, the director of the establishment creates a group and draws up the list of the convicts the cases of which this group has to examine. One group may need to go through information about 700 convicts. If there is a multidisciplinary team for individual planning of sentences at the establishment, no such groups are created and their function is performed by these multidisciplinary team. Under Article 14 (1), ‘based on the assessment by the multidisciplinary team, the decision about transferring the convict to the establishment for deprivation of liberty of NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM (NPM), 2015 37