A/HRC/4/40/Add.3 page 20 by contrast, is intolerable: there are bunks for only three detainees in each cell, and the rest have to sleep on the floor or in hammocks hung from the ceilings. The cells are filthy, dark and damp, without ventilation. Detainees are unable to leave their cells for fresh air or to get even the minimum exercise. 91. Some of the detainees in the police cells have been recently arrested and are therefore under police custody, in accordance with the law. The majority, however, are being held in pretrial custody or serving their sentences, and should be in the prison. The prison is unable to take them in, however, owing to lack of space, although the overcrowding is in fact much worse in the police station. Some detainees may remain months and even years on end in police cells. A perverse consequence of this situation is that their effective sentences are much longer, since they are unable to work and therefore unable to benefit from the system of sentence-reduction for work. 92. Detainees in the police station submitted complaints which the delegation only occasionally heard when visiting other detention centres. First, they complained that they had not been brought before a judge until several weeks after their arrest. While the delegation was unable to verify these claims, its scrutiny of the registration records in the police station did not provide any evidence that the claims were unfounded, as the records are so shoddily maintained. The detainees also complained that their lawyers had not been present during their questioning. They also claimed that police officials systematically used torture and ill-treatment, beating them to extract information and confessions and to enforce discipline in the cell-blocks in question. The delegation visited the room used for questioning, which the detainees called the “torture chamber”. Here they found, one after the other, implements which the detainees claimed had been used to torture them. The delegation also found one detainee chained to a post in the police station forecourt. He had been chained there, day and night, for more than three months, mumbling incoherent phrases. 93. It should be noted that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has an office in the police station, right next door to the so-called “torture chamber” and situated less than 10 metres from the cell-blocks and from the forecourt where the chained man was being held. 94. There is no prison facility in Puerto Cabezas, capital of the Atlántico Norte autonomous region. The delegation was informed that, in this area, more than 60 persons are being held in detention in the police station. E. Enforcement by committal 95. Civil society representatives stated their concern at the continuing provisions in Nicaraguan civil law relating to the institution of “enforcement by committal”. This refers to the power accorded to a judge in civil proceedings to order the detention of an individual if he or she has failed to surrender an item handed over as a loan guarantee or assets which have been kept as deposits or if he or she fails to comply with a contractual obligation. Some individuals have been arrested by order of a civil judge and placed in police cells, where they may remain for a period of months, up to a maximum of one year.