One of the most important obligations of the Public Defender within the goals of the National Preventive Mechanism is to effectively protect and monitor human rights in the penitentiary and other closed institutions.

The Public Defender's Office, together with the Special Preventive Group, permanently monitors the state of inmates in penitentiary facilities, psychiatric hospitals, and homes for older persons and children. The Public Defender checks how they are treated in order to protect them from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; reacts to the facts of ill-treatment and provides information about the existing situation to the public through special and annual reports.

The composition of the Special Preventive Group is renewed every year. In order to ensure effective monitoring, the Public Defender announced a competition for the following positions: persons experienced in monitoring the closed institutions, including lawyers, doctors, social workers, experts with the experience of indentifying facts of discrimination, a person with disabilities, a person with the experience in the field of juvenile justice and a person experienced in monitoring the military units and guardhouses.

Members of the Special Preventive Group act on the basis of special credentials of the Public Defender and are accountable only to the Public Defender of Georgia.

See more detailed information at: www.ombudsman.ge and http://jobs.ge/105773/.