114 MONITORING OF CUSTODIAL SETTINGS IN UKRAINE – the institutions have no space where a child could stay alone in private; the overregulated day schedule deprives children of sufficient free time to satisfy their personal needs or to rest to their own liking; – the children have limited rights to communicate with their families and can see their parents not more than once a month, on condition of full compliance with the existing in-house rules; any telephone call or meeting occurs only on permission of the administration, which makes contacts with nears fully controlled; – in the closed institutional environment children become victims of violence; interviews with students revealed facts of physical and verbal aggression on the part of personnel, frequent threats and aggression, sexual harassment and instigation of students against their peers “for correctional purposes”, on the backdrop of a very weak system of deterrence and prevention of violence against children; – prosecutorial oversight is perfunctory and does not envisage confidential interviewing of the children; – students are divided into groups only by age, if at all; – there is no system of registration of conflicts accompanied by verbal or physical violence amidst or against children; – instances of cruel treatment of the children do not get due response; as a rule such instances receive only a superficial reaction inside the institution or the issue is just wholly ignored; – the procedure of registration of signs of violent action against children or of response to cruel treatment is not regulated; – institutionalized children have no means or chances to contact with the outside world, which, consequently, significantly restricts a child’s right to complain. The same pertains to correspondence – all letters are examined by the institutional personnel. None of the visited institutions had a payphone and the residents had no free access to telephones; – any systemic interaction with non-government organizations does not exist. Inspection visits of the boarding schools for orphaned and parentless children and of boarding schools for children in need of correction of their physical or mental development revealed the following shortcomings: – at some residences the system of electric lighting fails to ensure the minimal lighting of the corridors and medical premises, which is attributable to voltage swings in the obsolete wiring and limitation of power consumption;