CAT/C/VNM/CO/1 examining judges reportedly do not investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment. The Committee is further concerned that confessions resulting from torture of suspects have reportedly resulted in sentences that include the death penalty (arts. 2 and 15). 29. The State party should: (a) Amend national legislation, including the Code of Criminal Procedure, in order to ensure, in law and practice, that any statement resulting from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is not invoked as evidence in court, except against the persons who carried out those acts; (b) Ensure that courts dismiss in practice all cases in which evidence was obtained as a result of torture, and that prosecutors and judges investigate and prosecute all such allegations of torture and ill-treatment; (c) Prosecute and punish all officials who have allowed evidence to be obtained as a result of torture and persons providing false testimony and false documents; (d) Ensure that all law enforcement, investigative, judiciary and medical officials are fully aware of the Convention’s provisions regarding the inadmissibility in court of coerced confessions; (e) Inform the Committee about all cases that were dismissed in court during the period under review because evidence was obtained as a result of torture. Conditions of detention 30. The Committee is concerned about reports of: (a) A dramatic increase in recent decades in the incarceration rate and the prison population in the State party; (b) Material conditions in penitentiary facilities that do not meet the minimum international standards, such as the absence of adequate sanitary and hygiene facilities, insufficient lighting and ventilation, insufficient quality and quantity of food, lack of outdoor physical exercise, inadequate health care and severe overcrowding, all of which, taken together, may amount to ill-treatment or even torture, and reports that some of these conditions are maintained deliberately as an additional punishment for the inmates; (c) The use of “security rooms” and “disciplinary rooms” where prisoners can be isolated in solitary confinement or small groups for up to three months and the reported use of corporal punishment, shackling and harsh disciplinary measures against inmates by prison officials or other prisoners who act under their instructions; (d) Restrictions on communication between prisoners and their families and punitive transfers, including multiple transfers, of certain prisoners between detention facilities so that they are far away from their families, without informing their families about the transfers, and stealing by prison staff of food, medicine and personal items sent to prisoners by their families; (e) Poor medical care, negligence and deliberate withholding of medical treatment by the medical staff in prisons, non-separation of healthy prisoners from those with contagious diseases and the lack of independence of doctors who are employed by the penitentiary authorities; (f) The subjection of dissident prisoners to psychological torture and the administering of unspecified drugs and medication with adverse effects; (g) The subjection of prisoners to labour in manufacture and agriculture as well as hazardous industries, such as the processing of cashew nuts (arts. 2, 11 and 16). 31. The State party should: (a) Urgently take all measures necessary to improve material conditions, including overcrowding, in all places of deprivation of liberty, in keeping with the 9