In the frame of supervision over legality of penalties and other means of compulsion, the RA Prosecutor General’s Office has inspected the legality of means of compulsion toward the outpatients of "Avan" Mental Health Center CJSC of the RA Ministry of Health. It turned out that on the ground of judicial acts made by courts in different periods of time 93 people were outpatients of mandatory treatment and are under the control at "Avan" Mental Health Center CJSC, but 27 people out of them had not attended the Center for a long time.

 

According to the studies on those 27 people it turned out that 6 of them had not attended the dispensary for a long time, not receiving necessary medicine his/her situation worsened and had inpatient treatment at other mental health center, 9 people were not in Armenia, 2 of them are serving their sentence in different criminal penitentiary centers of the Ministry of Justice of Armenia, and 10 people were obliged to come "Avan" Mental Health Center CJSC, taking written commitments, but those people had not attended the dispensary after that.

 

It is worth of mentioning that some people from the mentioned people had committed particularly grave commitment of great danger for the society under Articles 104, 105, 112, 131 of the RA Criminal Code.

 

It turned out that "Avan" Mental Health Center CJSC, in accordance with the acting legal regulations, regularly sent letters to the local police department of the patient's place of residence, but no measures were taken to find those people avoiding treatment. During the inspection there were also cases when, shortly after the appointment of outpatient compulsory treatment, the mentioned people crossed the RA state border, but did not return. The competent body conducting the treatment did not have any information about their health condition, police was not able to find them. In the result, enforcement of court acts were not actually ensured.    

 

This situation is mainly conditioned by the imperfection of the legislation regulating the sphere in Armenia. In particular, the legal regulations and liabilities of the acting Law on Police refer only to the cases envisaged by the civil procedure legislation. Meanwhile, according to the criminal procedure legislation, there is no legal regulation on the people prescribed for compulsory treatment by a court act or on people who avoid that treatment.

 

In addition, the lack of the right of police to bring people escaping compulsory treatment significantly limits the police's authority in this area.

 

According to the acting legislation, the court does not have the opportunity to impose compulsory supervision over outpatients to a psychiatrist when prescribing compulsory treatment without a court decision and (or) not to leave the territory of the Republic of Armenia, which also led to the above-mentioned factual negative situation.

 

Taking into account the fact that people evading compulsory treatment have previously been insane and have committed acts of great danger for other’s life and health combined with violence, including particularly serious, publicly dangerous acts, while not receiving compulsory outpatient treatment at home, and without receiving outpatient compulsory treatment, there is a danger of committing new publicly dangerous acts by those people, such as the issue of providing compulsory outpatient treatment in accordance with the court decision. In order to solve this problem the RA Prosecutor General’s Office has developed a draft package of amendments to the RA Government Decision N 884-N dated June 22, 2006, which has already been sent to the RA Ministry of Justice.

 

This package of drafts proposes to define that the Police, in accordance with the law, is obliged to bring people evading compulsory treatment to a psychiatric organization.

 

Besides, it is suggested to define supervision by the psychiatrist, without court’s decision to compulsory outpatient. At the same time, it is envisaged that a person can apply to the court to change his/her permanent residence and make a decision to leave the territory of the Republic of Armenia.