A/HRC/31/57/Add.4 52. Inside penitentiaries, prison personnel are often heavily armed, including with assault rifles, shotguns and hand guns – in one instance, the delegation even saw a tear-gas and flash-bang grenade launcher – which testifies to an extraordinarily high level of tension. The Special Rapporteur notes with concern the risk of such armament feeding into a vicious circle of distrust and tension between personnel and inmates. 53. Law No. 13.060, adopted on 22 December 2014, provides that priority has to be given to the use of non-lethal weapons by security forces, following the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality; however, the Special Rapporteur notes that said law applies only to security forces (not to prison officers) and does not mention which weapons are and are not included, and that further regulation is needed. 54. Adolescents subjected to socioeducational measures reported a high frequency of ill-treatment by police upon arrest and by personnel in socioeducational centres. Beatings, sometimes with sticks and truncheons, appeared to be a matter of course, as did profuse verbal abuse and threats. 55. The Special Rapporteur learned that adolescents who complain about such treatment are often punished by beatings or by loss of benefits, including extended periods of time in isolation cells. 56. Moreover, he heard reports of violent routine searches of cells, often after weekly visits, during which personnel, under the pretext of searching for drugs and/or weapons, would destroy everything and torture the inmates, including by use of dogs. 57. The Special Rapporteur also heard about cases of prisoner-on-prisoner violence, to which prison personnel turn a blind eye or which they even encouraged. This type of abuse is hard to document, as visits are simply denied immediately after such incidents. 58. Cases of torture and other ill-treatment are substantially underreported. The majority of the persons interviewed — adults and adolescents — told the Special Rapporteur they had refrained from filing complaints about ill-treatment out of fear of making matters worse, or because they expected it would be useless. This pattern is backed by various civil society monitors with whom the Special Rapporteur met; inmates report having been tortured but cannot be persuaded to bring formal charges. 59. Torture and ill-treatment of this nature constitutes an entrenched and pervasive practice that has been “naturalized” to such an extent that inmates do not mention it unless asked. The Special Rapporteur acknowledges the National Committee for the Prevention and Fight against Torture and the national mechanism to prevent and combat torture as steps in the right direction to deal with occurrences of torture, and expresses the hope that these result in a robust policy to ensure accountability and break the cycle of impunity. Excessive use of force: killings and “accidental deaths” during arrests and in custody 60. Despite noting that the number of killings by police has dropped in places where “police pacification units” have been established, the Special Rapporteur is concerned that, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Security, more than 2,200 people died during police operations throughout Brazil in 2013, an average of six people a day. In Sao Paulo state, according to a recent study by the Instituto Sou da Paz, killings with the participation of police have increased 2 per cent in recent months, while the overall homicide rate declined during the same period. Reportedly, more than 75 per cent of victims from 2010 to 2013 were poor Afro-Brazilian men aged between 15 and 29. 61. While some police killings result from legitimate use of force, many do not. In the vast majority of cases of excessive use of force, the police routinely file reports indicating “resistance to arrest followed by death”, thereby avoiding the duty to bring the perpetrators before a court. Numbers from Amnesty International show that, out of 220 investigations, 11