A/HRC/31/57/Add.4 Justice regarding custody hearings. The purpose of the project is to tackle problems with legal safeguards discussed above by fulfilling the internationally mandated duty of the State to bring every detained person promptly before a judge, who (a) rules on the legality of the arrest; (b) determines the necessity of pretrial detention, orders release on bail or the detainee’s own recognizance pending trial, or imposes measures on the detainee, short of detention, to ensure appearance in court; and (c) detects torture and ill-treatment. 98. Custody hearings have the benefit of reducing the disproportionately high number of pretrial inmates (40 per cent on average and, in one State, 78 per cent), and serve the important purpose of discouraging the use of torture. The Special Rapporteur understands that, in the pilot project, provisions are made for bringing the defendant to the courthouse within 24 hours of the arrest for a hearing in the presence of a defence lawyer, a prosecutor, a judge and, if there are signs of mistreatment, a doctor to perform an immediate forensic medical examination. 99. Statistics show that custody hearings, where applied, have resulted in the release after 24 to 48 hours of 43 per cent of detainees (in one state, 52 per cent), as opposed to 10 per cent previously. 100. The Special Rapporteur notes that the Federal Supreme Court actively champions these processes and that the Government is pursuing nationwide legislation to that end. He welcomes the expansion of alternative measures to pretrial detention, such as house arrest, electronic monitoring devices, restrictions on travel, retention of passports and the obligation to report periodically to the court. He notes that funds have been spent on more advanced measures, like electronic surveillance with ankle bracelets, which are expected to be put into effect soon. 101. Notwithstanding, he identifies a number of challenges: (a) the process does not currently apply to persons accused of murder, attempted murder or similarly grave crimes; (b) the rate at which defendants complain of mistreatment is not significantly higher than before, which suggests an underreporting of allegations, and the rate of actual proof of torture remains negligible; (c) with the current design, the detainee risks waiting a long time in the presence of the police officers who arrested him or her instead of in an appropriate facility; and (d) the geographic coverage within each state is not complete, leading to disparities of treatment among detainees in similarly located facilities. Even though all states have signed the agreement, it applies only to state capitals and larger cities. 102. One purpose of the hearing is to determine whether the defendant experienced torture or ill-treatment upon arrest, or in the first hours of detention in the delegacia (police station). The Minister of Security for Sao Paulo state told the delegation that, six months into the programme and with 4,198 persons having been brought before a judge, there had been no credible evidence of police abuse. Given the number of credible reports of ill-treatment during interrogation received during his visit, the Special Rapporteur notes that the absence of complaints likely does not reflect reality: the now-prompt hearings cannot have had such an immediate success in curbing torture in interrogation. Indeed, legal experts told the Special Rapporteur that detainees had reported torture during informal interviews, for example in the course of inspections, but had refused to formalize complaints out of fear of reprisal and due to a perception that nothing would be gained by denouncing torture formally — both arguments that he also heard from inmates. 103. According to the Sao Paulo state tribunal, between 24 February and 31 August 2015, judges from the Fifth Department (DIPO 5) investigated 466 complaints of torture and/or ill-treatment that had been brought during custody hearings. In 277 of those cases, the Tribunal found corroborating evidence (indícios de tortura) and sent them to the military and civil police internal affairs units for further investigation. As of the drafting of the 16