be placed in a de-escalation/safe room until criteria for such placement are fulfilled. Besides, measures of physical restraint and special means envisaged by Georgian legislation may be used in these rooms, if necessary. Physical restraint should be used for a reasonable period, until criteria given in paragraph 1 of this article are fulfilled. According to the information provided by the Ministry of Corrections, in 2015, prisoners were placed in a de-escalation room only in the penitentiary establishment N8 (overall, 175 cases). 133 prisoners of the establishment N3 and 20 prisoners of the establishment N6 were placed in safe rooms. There were a few instances of placing prisoners in de-escalation/safe rooms for long terms. There are many instances of placement of prisoners for more than 10 days, and a few instances of placement for 15-20 days. There was one case of placing the prisoner in a de-escalation room for 31 days. 2 prisoners were placed in safe rooms for 35 days. The above mentioned shows that placement of prisoners in de-escalation or safe rooms is not properly regulated by law. Subsidiary normative acts issued by the Minister do not introduce legal guarantees of protection. This creates a real threat of placing prisoners in de-escalation/safety rooms disproportionately and for unjustifiably long periods, as also confirmed in practice. In its report prepared based on the visit to Georgia of 2014, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture indicates that maximum period of placing the person in a de-escalation room (four days, as the delegation was told) is too lengthy. It should be reduced to a few hours and should never exceed 24 hours.36 Besides, the Committee underlines the importance of de-escalation strategy and points out that due to the absence of such a strategy prisoners may resort to such means of solving their problems as hunger strikes and acts of self-harm.37 The Public Defender regards it impermissible to place prisoners in a de-escalation/ safe room under current conditions for a long term, because it amounts to the infringement of human dignity. If there are still reasons for placing a prisoner in a de-escalation/safe room after the expiry of a 24-hour term, administration of the establishment must resort to other means, including provision of adequate psychiatric aid to prisoners. It is also worth noting that during the visits at N8 penitentiary establishment, the members of the Special Preventive Group were told by prisoners that if they were placed in a de-escalation room, they could not send mail, use phone and have visitors. According to the above mentioned regulations, placement in the de-escalation room should not be the basis for automatic restriction of rights provided by Georgian leg36 See the Report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture following the 2014 visit, CPT/Inf (2015), para. 94. 37 Ibid., para 54. 40 NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM (NPM), 2015