2.4.3.  REGIME; DISCIPLINARY LIABILITY; ENCOURAGEMENT 2.4.3.1.  DISCIPLINARY LIABILITY According to the European Prison Rules, disciplinary procedures shall be mechanisms of last resort.108 Prison authorities shall use mechanisms of restoration and mediation to resolve disputes with and among prisoners.109 The severity of any punishment shall be proportionate to the offence.110 Collective punishments and corporal punishment, punishment by placing in a dark cell, and all other forms of inhuman or degrading punishment shall be prohibited.111 Importantly, punishment shall not include a total prohibition of family contact.112 Use of disciplinary punishment should be in compliance with the principles of rule of law and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Conduct constituting a disciplinary offence should be determined by law or regulation.113 It should be noted that the Georgian legislation does not determine which disciplinary punishment should be imposed upon the perpetrator in which case. This vests prison leaders with too much discretion in choosing the type of punishment and the risk of disproportion application of disciplinary punishment increases. Our monitoring shows that prison administrations are most frequently choosing solitary confinement as a form of disciplinary punishment. This practice confirms once again that it is necessary to have a legal determination of which type of disciplinary sanction should be used in which cases to make sure the sanction selected is proportional to the conduct committed. Compared to 2013, the use of disciplinary punishment doubled in 2014. In particular, disciplinary sanctions were used in 1,408 cases in 2013 and in 2,972 cases in 2014. In its 2013 Report to the Parliament, the Public Defender recommended the Minister of Corrections to develop guidelines on the use of disciplinary sanctions to help establish uniform practices of sanction application across all of the penitentiary institutions. Unfortunately, the Public Defender’s recommendation remains unfulfilled. Presently, the most frequent grounds for imposing disciplinary punishment are the following violations: making noise, shouting, verbally abusing prison staff or other prisoners, disobedience to the prison staff, being late or failure to appear at roll-call and contaminating the prison territory. Analysis of the use of disciplinary sanctions in the Institution no. 8 shows that the prison director has been using the same sanction for different types of disciplinary misconduct. Thus, prisoners making noise were imposed any of the sanctions indicted in the table below, depending on the sole discretion of the Institution’s director. 108 109 110 111 112 113 The European Prison Rules, Rule 56.1. Ibid. Rule 56.2. Ibid. Rule 60.2. Ibid. Rule 60.3. Ibid. Rule 60.4. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, Rule 29. NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM OF GEORGIA 73