CAT/C/75 page 29 at the disposal of the public attorney. They said they knew of no cases of torture in which military personnel had been implicated and that, were they to learn by any means whatsoever of an unlawful act by a member of their staff, they would immediately, even unbidden, launch an investigation. E. General observations 1. Torture in the framework of crime investigation 137. Despite statements by a number of authorities, the information gathered by the Committee members suggests that torture continues to be practised frequently in Mexico, although reliable sources, both governmental and non-governmental, and Human Rights Commissions say it has declined in recent years. In most cases torture is resorted to as a means of obtaining information quickly and easily for later use in criminal proceedings (homicides, sexual offences, kidnappings and robberies were the ones most frequently mentioned), or in cases involving Federal offences such as drug trafficking or violation of the Federal Firearms and Explosives Act, membership of armed groups, etc. Those chiefly responsible are members of judicial police forces (policias judiciales, called policias ministeriales in some States) at both State and Federal level. 138. Many factors contribute to the persistence of torture. Several of them were mentioned to the Committee members by State authorities and have been cited in this report.21 One of them, as will be seen later on, is the widespread absence of penalties, whether administrative or criminal, for those responsible, facilitated by collusion between public attorneys’ offices and the judicial police. Many interviewees noted that the police lacked training and means, including technical means to investigate crime professionally and spoke of the networks of corruption in which many police officers were involved. The Jalisco Human Rights Commission recently made the following recommendation: “There are (…) factors inherent in the administrative structure which encourage and perpetuate torture. These are: lack of training of the public security forces, especially those under the authority of the State Attorney-General’s Office; heavy workloads and lack of technology; poor staff selection; low wages, inadequate benefits and corruption; high-ranking officers’ lack of interest in combating torture; and the belief that treating offenders more harshly will reduce crime. Such arguments have been used constantly by the authorities to justify cases of torture.”22 139. Torture occurs alongside a whole series of breaches of the legislation governing detention. On this point, the 1999 report of the Tamaulipas Human Rights Commission states the following: “Arbitrary detentions, blows, bodily injury, humiliation and searches are still constantly practised by police officers. The judicial police continue to effect detentions without a warrant from a competent authority, using as a pretext a mere investigation order issued by a public attorney’s office, i.e. a person is detained so that an investigation may be carried out, including house and room searches; time and again, in an attempt to justify the unlawful detention, some object the use or possession of which is illegal is placed among the victim’s clothing and it is then alleged that the case was one of