A/HRC/4/40/Add.3 page 22 VI. RECOMMENDATIONS 102. Nicaragua has made highly impressive progress in improving its institutions, yet a great deal still remains to be done, in particular relating to the establishment of a true judicial career structure, which would have a restraining effect on the current excessive mobility of judges. Above all, efforts must be made to build on what has already been attained. Accordingly, the Working Group proposes the following recommendations: (a) The authorities must ensure that the police comply strictly with the requirement to bring every detainee before a judge within a maximum period of 48 hours following his or her arrest. Presentation of the detainee must be made in person, with the physical presence of the detainee, and not consist merely in the submission of the police file. The judicial authorities must urge judges to ensure strict compliance with this rule. Compliance with this rule, which may appear a mere formality to an uninformed observer, is in point of fact a key safeguard against arbitrary detention and the possible occurrence of acts of torture and ill-treatment; (b) The authorities must take steps to improve substantially the system of registers kept in police stations. From these registers it should be possible to determine with precision, at any moment, the situation of all detainees, including the date and time of their arrest; the police officers responsible for taking them into custody; the date and time on which the detention was notified to the Office of the Public Prosecutor, to the detainees’ families and to their legal counsel; the date and time on which they were physically brought before a judge; the date and time on which they left the police station and the authority into whose charge they were handed; etc. The registers must contain all the necessary signatures and stamps; (c) Work must be undertaken to revise the rules in the country’s drug laws which impede or frustrate the idea that the punishment should be conducive to the rehabilitation of detainees and prepare them to return to society. In particular, a revision should be made to the provision contained in article 78 of Act No. 285, which stipulates that persons who have been prosecuted for the commission of offences involving the use or sale of drugs may not be released on any grounds against surety or benefit from the application of suspended sentences, parole, pardon or amnesty and, in addition, the provisions stipulating that, in all cases, they shall be sentenced to rigorous and not ordinary imprisonment and preventing them from benefiting from the system of sentence reduction for work. Consideration should also be given to the excessively high levels set for fines imposed as the principal penalty, since in the vast majority of cases these are converted to one year’s additional rigorous imprisonment. The fine could be set in accordance with the economic capacity, the property status or the income of the person being sentenced; (d) The institution of “enforcement by committal” - namely, the right of a judge in civil proceedings to order detention for failure to comply with obligations of a civil nature and the power of the police to detain in their cells persons who have not been arrested for the commission of offences - should be removed from the civil statute books;