(c) Adopt urgent measures to reduce overcrowding in prisons. The State party should enact a law establishing the maximum duration of pre-trial detention, and consider immediately releasing offenders or suspects imprisoned for the first time for petty offences, particularly if they are under 18 years of age; such persons should not be imprisoned until the problem of prison overcrowding has been solved; (d) Guarantee free medical care in prisons, ensure the right of prisoners to adequate food in practice, and effectively separate men and women; (e) Immediately end the torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention perpetrated under the responsibility of the traditional chiefs in the north. The Committee notes the delegation’s assurance that proceedings have been brought in such cases and urges the State party to step up its efforts in this direction. The peoples concerned should be duly informed of their rights and of the limits on the authority and powers of these traditional chiefs. 45. The Committee further recommends that the State party should: (a) Adopt, as a matter of great urgency, and ensure the effective implementation of a law establishing the right of all persons held in police custody, during the initial hours of detention, of access to a lawyer of their choice and an independent doctor, and to inform their relatives of their detention. The Committee remarks that any extension of detention in custody ought to be approved by a judge; (b) Abandon the notion, in its draft code of criminal procedure, of extending the period of police custody depending on the distance between the place of arrest and the place of custody, and ensure observance of the time limits on custody in practice; (c) Ensure that detention in custody under the Act on states of emergency conforms to international human rights standards and is not prolonged beyond what the situation requires. The State party should abolish administrative and military custody as options; (d) Systematically organize, as a matter of great urgency, the use of registers in all places of detention; (e) Separate the police from the prison authorities, e.g. by transferring responsibility for prison administration to the Ministry of Justice; (f) Clarify the concept of a “manifestly illegal order”, so that State employees, in particular police officers, members of the armed forces, prison guards, magistrates and lawyers, are clearly aware of the implications. Specific training on this point should be offered; (g) Allow appeals by foreigners against decisions by the administrative court to confirm deportation orders to stay execution. 26