E/CN.4/2001/66/Add.2 page 41 secretariat for justice or for penitentiary administration (as in the State of São Paulo), for the penitentiary system. Detainees are first taken to police lock-ups and are usually only transferred to penitentiary facilities upon authorization from penitentiary authorities. The latter are believed to be reluctant to authorize such transfers in a penitentiary system which is already overcrowded and believed therefore to be at a higher risk of revolts. This is why it is believed that prisons are never as seriously overcrowded as police lock-ups, even if this means that police lock-ups operate at up to five times their capacity. At the same time, the overcrowding in police lock-ups and delays in transferring detainees to penitentiaries lead to the routine mixing of those awaiting trial and those who have already been convicted. 121. Women must serve their sentences in separate establishments and persons aged over 60 years have to be accommodated in their own penal institution appropriate to their personal situation.37 The penal institutions designed for women will have a nursery, where the convicts will be able to nurse their children.38 Women prisoners must be supervised by women guards,39 which was not the case in the women’s prison visited by the Special Rapporteur in São Paulo (Tatuapé). The Special Rapporteur nevertheless notes that no women were found mixed with male detainees in any of the places of detention he visited. 2. Prisoners’ rights 122. With respect to visits, article 41 (X) of the LEP provides for the right of prisoners to visits from their “spouse, girlfriend, relatives, and friends on pre-established days”. According to the information received, visitors are sometimes denied access to their relatives and routinely subjected to harassment and humiliation, including strip searches, prior to entering any detention centre. Searches are allegedly rarely carried out in accordance with appropriate hygienic standards and include squatting and at times intimate searches. Elderly women and minors are reportedly similarly subjected to these searches. In a specifically notable example, authorities of Nelson Hungria (Minas Gerais) are believed to have attempted effectively to bar access to the Prison Ministry (Pastoral Carcerária) by deciding that its members should be strip-searched. Furthermore, according to sentenced prisoners held either in prisons or police lock-ups, only parents and sometimes spouses and children up to a certain age were allowed to visit them. This policy was justified by the relevant authorities of the detention facilities on the grounds of security and lack of adequate infrastructure. 123. With respect to food and clothing, article 41(I) of the LEP provides for the rights of prisoners to adequate food and clothing. However, in most, if not all detention facilities visited by the Special Rapporteur detainees complained about the poor quality of the food, alleging that it was often rotten. The food, as well as the coffee served in most detention facilities indeed appeared to the Special Rapporteur to be of very bad quality. Detainees complained about the fact that visitors were forbidden to provide them with food, except for items such as crackers. The Special Rapporteur also notes that most detainees were either half-naked or without proper and adequate clothing. 124. With respect to access to medical assistance, prisoners have the right to medical, pharmaceutical and dental treatment.40 In cases where the penitentiary does not have the proper facilities to provide the necessary medical assistance, it will be carried out in another place upon