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The HHC focuses on defending the rule of law and a strong civil society in a shrinking democratic space; the right to seek asylum and access protection; the rights to be free from torture and inhuman treatment; and the right to fairness in the criminal justice system. [...] In Hungary the practice of ethnic profiling and the recurring, discriminatory imposition of fines on Roma and the derogatory manifestations of biased police attitudes contribute to a lack of trust by Roma in the police and the criminal legal system. [...] The Human Rights Defender emphasized that this procedure “derogates from a number of principles of criminal law and criminal procedural law, in particular respect for the presumption of innocence, the adversarial principle and defense rights, the principle of individualization of penalties and, lastly, the right of access to a judge. [...] Following the Fourth and the Seventh Amendments to the Fundamental Law, in 2018, the National Assembly reintroduced a provision in the Act on Misdemeanors (Article 178/B) making it punishable to violate the rules on habitual residence in public spaces.46 Despite criticism by the respective UN Special Rapporteur,47 the HRC,48 and domestic judges arguing for the annulment of the legislation that vio. [...] The most often applied alternative sanction appears to be fines, however, in many cases, it cannot be effectively applied due to the financial situation of the defendant, and often it is not actually paid by the person fined but by someone else, so, in reality, it becomes a financial burden for the family of the person fined.55 In addition, in Hungary, the overall trend in the number of prisoners.