E/CN.4/2001/66/Add.2 page 40 to insufficient infrastructure or because of reported security reasons, mainly due to the overcrowding. According to statistics provided by the Secretariat for Penitentiary Administration of the State of São Paulo, as of 31 October 2000, out of a total population of 57,048 prisoners, only 61.33 per cent were working. 117. In case of heinous crimes, the sentence should be entirely served in a closed regime.29 However, changes were introduced by the Organized Crimes Act30 and the Torture Act31 providing that for crimes committed by criminal gangs and organizations and for the crime of torture, a closed regime is to be imposed only initially, allowing for progression. A debate is said to have taken place as to whether this measure should be extended to other heinous crimes. Some decisions of the Supreme Court have reportedly established the maintenance of the imposition of a closed regime throughout the sentence for other heinous crimes, while other decisions of the same court have admitted that the changes brought about by the Torture Act apply to all heinous crimes. E. Imprisonment of convicted prisoners 1. Prison facilities 118. The LEP enumerates the penal institutions in which sentences can be served.32 Detainees whose sentences have to be served in a closed regime shall be held in prisons or penitentiaries (penitenciaria).33 Closed regime sentences must be served in individual cells measuring at least 6 square metres.34 However, with the exception of one prison visited in the State of Minas Gerais (Nelson Hungria), the Special Rapporteur found that this provision was completely disregarded in practice. Those whose sentences have to be served in an open regime are to be held in a casa de albergado. It is reported that as a large number of states have not established casas de albergado, courts have ordered conditional temporary release in such cases (this may also be achieved by means of a habeas corpus application). Sentences to a semi-open regime must be served in industrial or agricultural colonies.35 These different penal institutions may be accommodated in one single prison complex. But, according to article 5 (XLVIII) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Brazil, “the prison sentence shall be served in separate establishments, according to the nature of the offence, the age and the sex of the convict”. 119. During his visit, the Special Rapporteur noted that police lock-ups were used both as places for short-term provisional detention and as places of detention for sentenced prisoners, because of the overcrowding in the penitentiary system. Representatives of civil society in the States of São Paulo and Minas Gerais emphasized that “the police have become a de facto prison authority, supplementing or nearly replacing the conventional prison system”.36 As stated above, this situation was also regretted by some police officials who recognized having neither the training, nor the personnel to assume both functions of judicial police and prison guards. 120. In practice, provisions regarding the separation of detainees according to their legal status (awaiting trial/convicted detainees) or the nature of the regime to which they have been sentenced (open/semi-open or closed regime) are frequently disregarded. According to NGOs, this may largely be due to the division of responsibilities among different state secretariats. In most states, the secretariat for public security is responsible for police lock-ups, while the