E/CN.4/2001/66/Add.2 page 15 3. Juvenile detention centres 39. In the State of São Paulo, minors are interned in institutions under the jurisdiction of the State Foundation for the Well-Being of Minors (Fundação Estadual para o Bem Estar do Menor - FEBEM) which is responsible for planning and executing detention programmes for juvenile offenders under the supervision of the Secretariat for Social Development Assistance. Some 4,000 minors are interned as, according to the Children’s and Adolescents Statute (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, ECA), a “socio-educational measure”. 40. The Special Rapporteur notes the destruction in October 1999 of the FEBEM institution Imigrantes where all juvenile offenders were held and whose conditions of detention, in particular with respect to overcrowding,2 amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment according to reports received prior to the mission. He was shown videos recorded at Imigrantes which appeared to confirm reports he had received. Half-naked detainees were severely beaten, some with long wooden sticks, at night in the courtyard of this institution. After the destruction of Imigrantes, some minors (around 950 according to a non-governmental study in July 2000) were reportedly transferred to separate units of other prisons, including the Criminological Observation Centre (COC) of Carandiru prison, Santo André and Pinheiros prisons, in violation of the ECA, while others were said to have been transferred to places specifically designed for minors. According to NGOs, reports from the Judicial Technical Division and from the Health Secretariat indicated that the minors’ places of detention lack even minimum hygiene. It is also reported that the minors are not separated by age or the nature of their crime, as the ECA requires. According to public prosecutors for children and adolescents (Promotores de Justiça da Infância e da Juventude da Cidade de São Paulo), the minors are not given any educational or recreational opportunities. Several legal actions, against these transfers were filed by the department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in charge of applying the ECA in the State of São Paulo, to no avail. Indeed, the São Paulo State Supreme Court overruled, on grounds of public security, lower court injunctions ordering the closure of the FEBEM units. It was explained to the Special Rapporteur that different public prosecutors, i.e. those in charge of filing appeals, have the power to appeal to the Federal Supreme Court against this decision, but were apparently not willing to do so. New FEBEM institutions had nevertheless been opened recently or were planned to be rapidly built in an effort to resolve the situation inherited from the destruction of Imigrantes. 41. The Secretary in charge of Social Assistance indicated that since the destruction of Imigrantes a programme of building, decentralized (in order for adolescents to be closer to their families) and small (in order to separate adolescents according to their age or the nature of the offence they were suspected of having committed or for which they had been sentenced) facilities had been initiated to supplement the 15 existing units. He recognized that this was a difficult transitional period, often criticized, which required a lot of effort, in particular financial input. The issue of the location of the FEBEM institutions was also raised, as citizens did not want them in their neighbourhoods. At the end of this process, adolescents would be held eight per cell in units of five cells. Each FEBEM complex would have two or three units. A minority of adolescents, the most dangerous, would still have to be sent to prison-type complexes. Within 30 days, the Secretary was planning to deactivate Pinheiros, a prison with no courtyard, as a juvenile detention centre. Franco da Rocha and then Tatuapé were also said to be