A/HRC/7/3/Add.6 page 22 79. Although many victims of torture in Sri Lanka are provided with compensation in article 11 cases by the Supreme Court, these cases are not taken up for criminal procedure. According to the Attorney General, the reason for this discrepancy lies in the diversity of standards of proof before the Supreme Court and the criminal courts. However, the Special Rapporteur has found that the Supreme Court applies high standards of proof and he is convinced that many of the cases would have succeeded also in criminal procedures. Corporal punishment in prisons 80. The Special Rapporteur appreciates the recent abolition of corporal punishment in Sri Lanka under the Corporal Punishment Act No. 23 of 2 August 2005. However, in the course of his visit, he received disturbing complaints of cases of corporal punishment corroborated by medical evidence. In particular, in Bogambara prison the Special Rapporteur heard of a number of instances of corporal punishment and was informed of the names of prison guards who regularly beat prisoners. In the office indicated by the informants, the Special Rapporteur found instruments that could have no other use than for beatings, such as plastic tubes bound together in a bundle. 81. Again, prisoners reported that two detainees recently punished in this manner had been transferred shortly before the Special Rapporteur’s visit. Nevertheless, the Special Rapporteur was able to speak to one of the detainees concerned later in Welikada Prison, Colombo. The detainee confirmed that he had been corporally punished by one of the guards at Bogambara Prison. He bore visible marks on his back of recent abuse which medically corroborated his allegations (see appendix, paragraph 92). 82. In the debriefing of the assistant superintendent of police at Bogambara Prison, the chief jailer admitted the use of corporal punishment in cases of detainees who “do something wrong”. He also confirmed that they had received many complaints of ill-treatment against the guards mentioned by the Special Rapporteur. The Special Rapporteur is pleased to report that the Government has initiated an inquiry to look into this matter. III. CONDITIONS OF DETENTION 83. As far as conditions of detention are concerned, the Government provided the Special Rapporteur with statistics indicating severe overcrowding of prisons. While the total capacity of all prisons amounts to 8,200, the actual prison population has reached 28,000. Poor conditions of detention can amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, which is well established in the jurisprudence of several international and regional human rights mechanisms. In Sri Lanka, the combination of severe overcrowding with the antiquated infrastructure of certain prison facilities places unbearable strains on services and resources, which for detainees in certain prisons, such as the Colombo Remand Prison, where the lack of space was most obvious, amounts to degrading treatment. The lack of adequate facilities also leads to a situation where convicted prisoners are held together with pretrial detainees in violation of Sri Lanka’s obligation under article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Although the conditions are definitely better in prisons with more modern facilities, such as Polonnaruwa and the Female Ward of the New Magazine Prison, the prison system as a whole is in need of structural reform.