During the first 6 months of 2019, 8 cases of self-harm were reported in the de-escalation room of Establishment No. 2 and 31 - in Establishment No. 8; 2 cases of self-harm were reported in the deescalation room of Establishment No. 3 during 3 months of 2019 (July, August, September). All this calls into question the effectiveness of the use of this measure for the prevention of infliction of harm to one’s own or other’s life or health. It should be noted that during the visit paid to Establishment No. 2, the Special Preventive Group received information from several prisoners about the cases of ill-treatment of a prisoner with mental health problems in the de-escalation room. In one of the cases, the prisoner had no personal belongings in the de-escalation room and was given his warm clothes only in the evening of the second day. The prisoner had not been consulted by a psychiatrist before or after being placed in the de-escalation room. The Special Preventive Group considers that the placement of prisoners with mental health problems in the de-escalation rooms should only be used as an extreme measure, and before using this measure, for achieving the goal of safety, prison staff should use other, less restrictive means, such as supervision by staff or electronic supervision. If the above turns out to be insufficient, placement in the deescalation room should be used as an urgent measure, the duration of which should not exceed 24 hours and, at the same time, the patient should be served by a multidisciplinary team (psychologist, social worker, doctor and, if necessary, psychiatrist). If the 24-hour placement in the de-escalation room and the work of the multidisciplinary team are insufficient to achieve the safety of the prisoner with mental health problems, the prisoner should be transferred immediately to the psychiatric division of Medical Establishment for Pre-trial and Sentenced Inmates No. 18 or other psychiatric facility. In addition, the Public Defender considers that a long placement of prisoners with mental disorders in the de-escalation room, use of handcuffs against them and failure to provide adequate psychiatric care violate the requirements of Article 15 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities58 and represent cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.59 Placement in de-escalation rooms and solitary confinement (so-called safe) cells as an informal punishment: According to the prisoners interviewed by the Special Preventive Group, the real reason for placing them in the above-mentioned cells/rooms is the violation of the regime requirements or verbal abuse of staff rather than the grounds provided by the statute. It is worth noting that prisoners are in extremely difficult conditions in the de-escalation rooms and 58 According to Article 15 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, "No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." 59 In the case of Kucheruk v. Ukraine (No. 2570/04), the repeated and lengthy placement of a handcuffed prisoner with mental health problems in a solitary confinement cell, due to the lack of resources to manage the prisoner’s behavior and provide phsyciatrtic care, was found by the European Court of Human Rights as a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture) of the European Convention, para. 131. 36