CAT/C/CMR/CO/4 The State party should take urgent steps to reduce the period of pretrial detention, in particular by ensuring that the maximum detention periods provided for under pretrial detention legislation are observed and by applying the principle that pretrial detention should be viewed as an exceptional measure. Prison conditions 15. While taking note of projects initiated by the State party, with support from the international community, and the State party’s commitment, made at the time of its universal periodic review (A/HRC/11/21/Add.1, recommendation 76 [14, 21 and 33]), to improve prison conditions, the Committee remains deeply perturbed by the deplorable living conditions in places of detention. The Committee has received reports of prison overcrowding; violence among prisoners; corruption (such as the renting of prison cells and sale of medical equipment); the lack of hygiene and adequate food; health risks and inadequate health care; the violation of the right to receive visits; and reports that some persons awaiting trial have been held in prison for a period longer than the sentence they face. It is also concerned by the use of civil imprisonment, in conformity with article 564 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which means that persons, including minors, who have completed their sentences may be held in detention for a further period of from 20 days to 5 years, depending on how much money they owe. The Committee is also concerned by reports that there is no systematic separation of minors from adults, of persons in pretrial detention from convicts, or between men and women, and that female prisoners can be guarded by male staff (arts. 2, 11 and 16). The State party should take urgent steps to bring conditions in all places of detention, including gendarmerie and police stations, into line with the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment (General Assembly resolution 43/173) and, in particular: (a) Reduce prison overcrowding by favouring non-custodial penalties in its policy on crime, including probation, suspended sentences, community service, along with avenues of out-of-court dispute settlement, such as mediation. Similarly, it should increase judicial and non-judicial staff. As for children in conflict with the law, the State party should ensure that imprisonment is used only as a last resort; (b) Improve the quality of food and health care provided to prisoners; (c) Take appropriate measures to put an end, once and for all, to alleged corruption and ransom demands in prisons; (d) Strengthen judicial supervision of prison conditions; (e) Revise the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure on civil imprisonment and devise other means to allow detainees to pay off their debts; (f) Reorganize prisons so that persons awaiting trial are detained separately from convicted prisoners, improve detention conditions for minors, ensuring that they are always detained separately from adults, and further develop alternative detention centres for minors away from prisons; (g) Take measures to ensure that female prisoners are separated from male prisoners and guarded by female staff only; (h) Provide a detailed report on the results achieved and/or difficulties encountered in the development of the programme to improve prison conditions by Cameroon and the European Development Fund between December 2006 and December 2010. 4 GE.10-42570