that their transfer to de-escalation rooms serves punitive purposes whenever they violate the statute of an establishment and not for security reasons. The inspection of documentation in establishments nos. 3 and 6 revealed that in some of the periods spent by a prisoner in a de-escalation room, a disciplinary report had been applied. Usually, according to the existing practice, a disciplinary penalty is applied without an oral hearing and an order on its application is only substantiated with explanations and reports submitted by the personnel. Prisoners practically do not participate in disciplinary proceedings. This increases the risk for the imposition of arbitrary disciplinary penalties. The Public Defender welcomes conducting an official inspection by the Inspectorate General of the Ministry of Corrections of Georgia in establishment no. 7 concerning the incidents of the complete ban on contacts with relatives, identified by the Special Preventive Group in 2015. As the result of the inspection, a disciplinary penalty was imposed on the director of establishment no. 7 and its lawyer. It is a positive fact that in 2016, there were no incidents of imposing full bans on contacts with relatives in establishment no. 7. The Public Defender hopes that the Inspectorate General, within the systematic monitoring, will continue the examination of the practice of the use of disciplinary penalties in order to prevent their arbitrary imposition. According to the Ministry of Corrections’ report on its annual activities of 2016, the individual sentence planning (ISP) mechanism has been successfully implemented for juvenile convicts. In 2015, the ISP approach was also introduced in establishments nos. 5, and 16. In 2016, the Ministry of Corrections launched a pilot programme of Individual Sentence Planning at establishments nos. 6, 12 and 17. Individual sentence planning will have covered all penitentiary establishments by 31 December 2017, which is welcomed by the Public Defender of Georgia. In 2016, various rehabilitation activities were carried out in penitentiary establishments; some of them are still ongoing. In the course of the year, prisoners could take part in cultural and sporting events, pursue general/professional education and study various trades. In this regard, establishment no. 5 sets the best example. Despite the attempts to enhance rehabilitation component, there are still significant challenges in this regard. There is a lack of rehabilitation activities in most of the penitentiary establishments, especially in closed-type and high-security prisons;; besides, the indicators of prisoners’ participation in ongoing activities are low. Due to language barriers, foreign prisoners find it difficult to communicate with prison administration, including social workers, and therefore are virtually unable to be involved in rehabilitation activities. The number of personnel in social units remains insufficient. E.g., two psychologists deal with 1,218 prisoners in establishment no. 2, and 1,922 prisoners in establishment no. 17. Only one psychologist works with 1,152 prisoners in establishment no. 14, and 1,706 prisoners in establishment no. 15. In the context of positive management of prisoners’ behaviour, unfortunately, it should be mentioned that against the background of the increase in the number of the use of disciplinary penalties, in 2016, the cases of giving incentives prisoners decreased by 37.2%. 18 HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION IN CLOSED INSTITUTIONS