A/HRC/31/57/Add.4 143. Conditions of detention often amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Severe overcrowding leads to chaotic conditions inside facilities, and greatly impacts the living conditions of inmates and their access to food, water, legal defence, health care, psychosocial support, work and education opportunities, as well as sun, fresh air and recreation. 144. Impunity remains the rule rather than the exception, partly owing to highly deficient procedures and practices related to monitoring and documentation. 145. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the measures taken, or envisioned, at various levels of government, to combat torture, ill-treatment and unnecessary deaths. He urges the Government step up efforts to ensure nationwide and effective implementation and enforcement of these measures, to safeguard its citizens. B. Recommendations 146. In a spirit of cooperation and partnership, the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government, with appropriate assistance from the international community, take decisive steps to implement the recommendations outlined below. 147. With regard to legislation, the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government of Brazil: (a) Ensure effective implementation and enforcement of existing legislation, and remove obstacles related to resource scarcity or inappropriate political priorities; (b) Use more assiduously and effectively the powers granted in law to federal prosecutors to charge state and federal officials with violations of constitutional norms, including the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment (currently an exceptional measure that has never been used for these purposes); (c) Effectively implement and enforce existing law by conditioning federal funding on state compliance; (d) Introduce effective measures to overcome overcrowding, backlogs and bottlenecks, including with reference to best practices and lessons learned by the states and other countries; (e) Introduce drug policy reform and develop standards for determining purpose of possession based on fixed quantities; (f) Strengthen alternatives to punishment, such as prevention and treatment of drug use; (g) Define and implement a more rigorous approach to legitimate arrests, to abolish the current misuse of flagrancia; (h) By law, immediately expand the application of custody hearings to the entire country, and ensure complete geographic coverage within each state; (i) Widen custody hearings to cover all categories of crime; (j) Encourage victims to speak up and take measures for the effective documentation of torture or ill-treatment; (k) Eliminate constraints that presently prevent detainees from formally denouncing, and the State from knowing, the precise prevalence of torture and ill-treatment; 21