A/HRC/40/59/Add.2 B. Prolonged detention in police stations 38. During his visits to the provinces of Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Formosa, the Special Rapporteur was alarmed by the widespread use of police stations to hold detainees for prolonged periods or even permanently due to the chronic overcrowding in pretrial detention facilities. While most individuals held in police stations were in pretrial detention, undergoing trial or awaiting appeal, a number of convicts were being held there as well. 39. The police stations visited were clearly not designed for detention exceeding 24 hours. The Special Rapporteur encountered numerous male and female inmates who reported having been held in these places for prolonged periods, usually ranging from several weeks to more than six months, often without ever having seen a judge or a public defender. Furthermore, police officers acknowledged that they are overburdened and deeply frustrated that they have to take on prison guard functions in addition to their traditional policing role. Police personnel reported that they had not been trained and equipped for this task. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that the chronic stress suffered by police officials may significantly increase the risk of ill-treatment. 40. Although the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has previously determined that holding detainees in police stations is illegal, the number of people detained in police stations in the Province of Buenos Aires has almost doubled, from 1,836 detainees in 2015 to 3,473 in 2018. 41. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the recent adoption by the Government of its initiative to reform the infrastructure of the Federal Prison Service, which aims to create 18,000 additional places throughout the country between 2017 and 2023. At the same time, the Special Rapporteur emphasizes that this initiative should be accompanied by a significant increase in the application of alternatives to detention. C. Material conditions 42. While the Constitution provides in article 18 that the prisons of the Nation must be healthy and clean, for security and not for punishment of the prisoners detained in them, the Special Rapporteur regrets to report that, in some institutions, the infrastructure and the conditions of detention he encountered were incompatible with human dignity and may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or even torture. 43. The Special Rapporteur was particularly alarmed by the conditions he observed in the provincial police stations and penitentiaries. For example, in provincial Police Stations Nos. 1 and 5 (Buenos Aires Province), the Police Prison for Men (Alcaidía Policial de Varones) and Ibarreta police station (Formosa Province) and in several wings of the prisons in Florencio Varela (Buenos Aires Province) and Cruz del Eje (Córdoba Province), numerous men and women had no mattresses and were therefore obliged to sleep directly on the cement floor, or on the bare rack of metal beds. In some police stations, detainees were obliged to take turns to sleep, as there was not even enough space for everyone to lie down at the same time. To the extent blankets and mattresses were available, they were often severely torn, ragged and disintegrating. Cells were often infested with insects and/or rats, poorly ventilated and poorly lit, with improvised electrical installations hanging from ceilings and walls. Many cells had no artificial light at all, and often access to toilets was limited, particularly during the night. In many cells, water taps or even toilets were blocked, with no access to hot water and no supply of basic hygiene products. 44. In Prison No. 9 (Córdoba Province), four triple-storey beds were crammed into cells measuring 3 by 4 m. Ten inmates were locked up in each cell for 16 hours per day, without any sanitary installations, without any artificial light and without any activity or space to move. There were no tables or chairs, and inmates had to eat their meals sitting on their beds. Their cells were opened twice a day for four hours each time, and only then could they access a bathroom, as well as a narrow, neon-lit corridor of approximately 6 to 8 m2 equipped with a television, which connected four identical cells holding a total of 40 inmates. Inmates were held in these conditions with absolutely no access to sunlight or open spaces for periods 9