E/CN.4/2004/3/Add.3 page 12 34. The Working Group’s position on this matter is shared by other human rights mechanisms.1 When the Working Group visits a detention centre in any country, it requests permission to meet with detainees awaiting trial rather than with convicted criminals serving their sentences. For this reason, the questions that the Working Group asks detainees during such meetings concern their legal situation and the status of the judicial proceedings against them. 35. Representatives of the federal Government and the provincial governments used forceful language when talking about the situation in prisons, prison cells and police stations. Some even said that the prison system in Argentina had collapsed. While the Working Group is aware that this is a problem that the current Government has inherited, it wishes to remind the Government that it needs to take urgent steps to improve the situation. The main problem appears to be overcrowding in detention centres. In many of the centres that it visited, the Working Group observed that cells were used to hold twice as many prisoners as they were designed to accommodate. The situation in the police station in La Plata and the Salta branch of the Criminal Investigation Division was of particular concern. The Working Group received reports that in one province containers and lorries without windows or ventilation had been used to accommodate detainees. At the Social and Educational Guidance Centre (COSE), a youth custody centre, visited by the Working Group in Mendoza, many inmates expressed their delight at the Working Group’s visit, as it was the first time in months that they were allowed to go out into the yard and breathe some fresh air. At other centres, some officers complained that there were not enough staff to allow detainees to leave their cells. The delegation also observed poor sanitary conditions where inmates had no access to minimum washing or toilet facilities; where sick inmates were not given any medication; and where detainees suffered from scabies and mattresses were infested with ticks. In some of the detention centres visited, detainees had to defecate in plastic bags. 36. Under current legislation, persons accused of committing federal offences must be detained in federal centres and persons accused of non-federal offences, in provincial detention centres. However, in some provinces there are no federal detention centres. The authorities in Salta complained that the provincial government had transferred 100 hectares of land to the federal Government a few years earlier for the purposes of building a federal detention centre for federal criminals and that nothing had been done. As a result, the province’s detention centres had to house 70 per cent of those accused of federal offences, mainly drug trafficking and smuggling; this seriously aggravated the problem of overcrowding in the province’s prisons. 37. Under international law, any person who is arrested must be informed immediately of the charges against him or her and taken promptly before a competent judge or an official authorized to exercise judicial powers. The delegation was told that, under Argentine law, the judge must decide, after hearing the accused’s statement, whether to order pre-trial detention or set the accused free. Most of the detainees interviewed by the delegation complained that they had been placed in pre-trial detention without a proper hearing with a judge. They had simply been taken before an “investigating judge” or clerk of the court, who had placed them in pre-trial detention, signing on behalf of the judge. Some detainees complained that the investigating judge had not listened to their arguments in favour of their release or against their detention and had listened only to the official from the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Detention orders are communicated to