E/CN.4/2001/66/Add.2 page 38 circuit court should have at least one provisional detention facility in the interests of the administration of criminal justice and to ensure that detainees are held close to their family or community.24 However, it is not clear whether there is a limit on the time a person having been formally charged can be held in a police precinct (delegacia de policia) before being transferred to a provisional detention facility. While the law appears clear, and provides that a person may be kept in a police lock-up for up to 24 hours (after which a judge must issue a provisional detention order), the jurisprudence is relatively contradictory. The Federal Supreme Court is reported to have decided that “the detention of an accused person in a police station cannot exceed the time of regular proceedings”,25 without nevertheless referring to the 24-hour period provided for in the law. According to some of the Special Rapporteur’s official interlocutors, for the purpose of the law, police station stations are indeed considered “public jails” and therefore provisional detainees, i.e. persons detained either under a temporary or a preventive detention warrant, can remain in police cells for more than the 24-hour period. They nevertheless pointed out that it was illegal to hold convicted prisoners in police stations or pre-trial prisons and to hold remand detainees in prisons for convicted prisoners. According to NGOs and public prosecutors, provisional detention in police lock-ups should be considered illegal since article 102 provides that provisional detainees must be detained in specific provisional detention facilities. Because of the lack of space in provisional detention centres, the police and judicial authorities are believed to have been “obliged” to ignore the law. A number of state High Courts have thus decided that where there was no appropriate place in a penitentiary institution, even convicted prisoners may remain in police cells, which, a fortiori, would extend to provisional detainees.26 The Federal Court of Appeal, however, is said to have decided that a convicted prisoner cannot be held in a police station.27 That the civil police are in charge of the preliminary investigation and police lock-ups are guarded by civil police officers is believed to facilitate the abuse of suspects by police investigators in an attempt to extract confessions or information related to the criminal inquiry. Furthermore, because of the overcrowding in the prisons of most states, convicted prisoners are often kept in delegacias and are therefore often mixed with those awaiting trial, in violation of the LEP. 111. The Governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro informed the Special Rapporteur of his intention to create “custody houses” under the jurisdiction of the Secretariat for Justice where persons caught in flagrante, who at the time of the visit of the Special Rapporteur were detained in police stations, would be taken immediately after arrest. According to this new procedure, after having been arrested, a suspect would be taken to a delegacia legal where his/her identity would be established and a preliminary interrogation take place. The suspect would then be taken to a “custody house” where he/she would be further questioned. The Special Rapporteur welcomed this proposal, while stressing the need to establish a time limit for the police to hand over the suspect to an institution under the jurisdiction of the Secretariat for Justice. According to the State Secretary for Public Security of Rio de Janeiro, it would be difficult to establish such a time limit as it would depend on the number of victims’and witnesses’ testimonies to be recorded. D. Sentences 112. According to article 33 of the Penal Code, a closed regime is mandatory for prison sentences of more than eight years and should be served in maximum or medium security facilities. A semi-open regime may be granted for prison sentences of between four and