E/CN.4/2004/3/Add.3 page 20 66. Once the criminal investigation is completed, the question of keeping the suspect in detention should be reconsidered if it is likely that, owing to an overload of cases, the hearing or oral proceedings will not be held immediately. Suspects should be released if this is not incompatible with the higher interests of justice and if some other way can be found of ensuring that the suspect will appear for trial. 67. Urgent attention should be paid at both the federal and provincial levels to improving the detention conditions of persons in pre-trial detention. Particular attention should be paid to compliance with article 10, paragraph 2, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 68. Urgent measures should be taken with regard to the number of the prison population, since overcrowding in prisons and police stations is at the root of the problems identified with regard to detention conditions. The situation in the provinces of Buenos Aires and Salta is particularly serious. Consideration should be given to increasing the capacity of the prison system or reducing overcrowding by making use of alternative measures such as early release, release on bail, parole, house arrest, night imprisonment, daytime imprisonment, and furlough. No person whose pre-trial detention has already been ordered by a judge, much less a person convicted of an offence and serving a sentence, should be held in a police station. 69. As far as possible, efforts should be made to avoid holding children or foreigners detained under the immigration laws in police stations. 70. The right of detainees to communicate freely with their defence lawyer should be guaranteed. The shortage of telephones in detention centres, the lack of telephone cards or money to buy them and detainees’ financial problems should not prevent them from communicating freely and easily with their lawyer. Access to a free or court-appointed defence lawyer or to one provided free of charge by a bar association or law faculty should be facilitated. Ownership of a property should not be an obstacle to the use of these services. 71. The Working Group invites the federal Government and the provincial governments to monitor closely the behaviour of senior and junior police officers, particularly with regard to their powers of arrest and detention. Particular attention should be paid to the criminal practice of falsifying procedures with the aim of improving the police’s public image at the cost of sending innocent civilians to prison. The efforts of officials of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to deal with this problem should be encouraged and supported. In addition, any manifestation of racist, xenophobic, homophobic or other behaviour that is incompatible with the full observance of human rights - which the police are expected to enforce - should be punished. 72. The Working Group calls on the Government to ensure that there is an effective, accessible, rapid and straightforward judicial remedy available in the provinces where police edicts are still in use and where the police still have the power to arrest, apprehend or detain a person for committing a minor offence.