CAT/OP/PRT/1 delegation also received many complaints about the lack of personal hygiene and cleaning products. 70. While the delegation did not consider the food shown to them by the prisoners to be of particularly bad quality, the State party is urged to check on food hygiene and the nutritional value, variety and quality of the food served in prisons on a regular basis. The Subcommittee encourages the State party to ensure that all inmates receive sufficient supplies of personal hygiene and cleaning products. 71. In some prisons, cells were mouldy, humid, cold and dilapidated, and there was a lack of essential maintenance. The delegation observed in some of the prisons visited that parts of the buildings, such as windows, showers and ceilings, were broken and were reportedly left unrepaired for months or years. Prisoners reported that they had repeatedly requested the materials necessary and the permission to fix these things themselves to no avail. The delegation saw, for example, broken windows with sharp pieces of glass that had reportedly been left in the frame for over a year, permitting cold air to enter in winter and creating the possibility of accidental injury or even the risk that shards of glass from the window could be used as weapons. This is a situation that creates a serious risk for the prisoners’ health, including exposure to accidental or intentional injury. 72. The Subcommittee urges the State party to ensure that the material conditions in detention do not pose health hazards and recommends that the State party ensure that essential maintenance is carried out, including by creating paid or voluntary maintenance work opportunities for inmates. 73. The Subcommittee delegation observed that, almost without exception, call bells did not work in the facilities visited, including the bells in disciplinary cells. In case of emergency inmates could only attract attention by banging on the door. There were complaints that the guards did not react or only reacted after several hours in such cases. 74. The Subcommittee recommends that the State party ensure that the call bells are functional in all facilities and that units are staffed in a way that makes it possible to respond to alarms. B. Discipline 75. The delegation was alarmed by what it considered the overuse of disciplinary cells in all the prisons visited and by the existence of waiting lists of up to six months for prisoners waiting to serve their disciplinary punishment. The situation was probably due to the use of disciplinary cells as confinement cells when the regular confinement cells were full. At the same time, the delegation understood that the situation was the result of understaffing and overcrowding, such that the prison population could not be sufficiently controlled and the administration had to isolate people for their own protection or for the protection of others. It noted with concern that the disciplinary cells were also used to keep the prisoners in isolation pending the outcome of disciplinary proceedings and that the time spent in confinement cells was reportedly not deducted from the duration of the disciplinary detention. 76. While according to the legislation in force13 the maximum duration of disciplinary detention is 21 days, there were allegations of its use lasting for up to 30 days and in one case even 90 days, in Porto Prison, when several punishments were imposed consecutively. The Subcommittee wants to draw the attention of the State party to the lack of records of the use of disciplinary cells in this prison. In other prisons most inmates acknowledged that disciplinary detention did not exceed 21 days and that there was no resort to consecutive punishments. An undue duration of isolation is a serious matter and may constitute psychological torture. Some inmates mentioned that after 10 to 12 days in solitary confinement they started “getting crazy”. 13 Enforcement of Sentences Code, art. 105 (g). 13