A/64/215 facilities, the Special Rapporteur not only looks for evidence of torture but also assesses the general conditions of detention. Many persons whom the Special Rapporteur interviews in detention tell him that they were beaten up during the early days of their police custody because the police resort to such practices as a routine part of their work in order to extract confessions. The suffering caused by these few hours of torture, however, is often outweighed by the suffering individuals have to endure for years, and sometimes for the rest of their lives in inhuman and degrading conditions of detention, practically forgotten by the outside world. 39. In many countries, places of detention are constantly overcrowded and filthy locations, where tuberculosis and other highly contagious diseases are rife and which lack the minimum facilities necessary to allow for a dignified existence. Inter-prisoner hierarchies and violence are common features of many places of detention, and the guards often delegate their authority and responsibility for protecting detainees from discrimination, exploitation and violence to privileged detainees who in turn use this power for their own benefit. In many countries, corruption within the administration of justice, whether by the police, prosecutors, judges or prison officials, is rampant. 40. Many people think that torture is primarily the fate of political and other “high-ranking” prisoners. In reality, most of the victims of arbitrary detention, torture and inhuman conditions of detention are usually ordinary people who belong to the poorest and most disadvantaged sectors of society, including those belonging to the lowest classes, children, persons with disabilities and diseases, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender persons, drug addicts, aliens and members of ethnic and religious minorities or indigenous communities. 41. They are arrested by police officers on the suspicion of having committed theft or similar minor crimes, often without sufficient evidence. Since in many countries confessions are still regarded as the most important proof during criminal trials, politicians, judges and prosecutors — and also the media — put considerable pressure on the police to produce confessions. This pressure is exacerbated by the fact that in many places no sophisticated methods of gathering evidence are available to law enforcement officers. Sadly, whether the victims confess or not depends less on what they have done than on how strong they are, both physically and mentally, in resisting torture. As a consequence, a considerable percentage of the roughly 10 million prisoners and detainees worldwide 2 may be innocent victims of arbitrary detention. They are often charged by prosecutors solely on the basis of their statements made during police interrogations. If they dare to complain to prosecutors or prison authorities about torture practices, their complaints are not taken seriously and are not properly investigated. One of the routine answers the Special Rapporteur hears from police officers, prosecutors, judges and high-level State officials to his question as to whether they have received any complaints about torture from detainees is that such complaints may well have been submitted, but they are not further investigated as they have been fabricated for the purpose of evading justice. That means that as soon one is behind bars, one is no longer trustworthy. __________________ 2 09-43792 The “World prison population list”, published by the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College in London (8th ed., 2009), provides the number of 9.8 million detainees, which may be a conservative estimate. In this report, the term “detainees” is primarily used for all persons deprived of personal liberty, whereas the term “prisoners” is used for persons serving a prison sentence after having been convicted of a crime. 9