categories of prisoners should be implemented. (w) inmate status and release entitlement, increased crime rates, high recidivism rates, and the popularity of tougher law and order approaches favouring longer prison terms over alternative sentences - has resulted in severely overcrowded prisons (A/HRC/11/2/Add.2, para. 42). Non-governmental sources: At present the prison population is around 460,000, leaving a shortfall of 160,000 places in the system. Even though the federal government has invested in building new prisons, no building programme can match the rate of growth of the number of detainees. As such, any semblance of separation or categorization of prisoners is not done, to the extent that juveniles and women can be detained with adult males. Permanent monitoring must be present in every institution and in places of detention for juveniles. (x) Non-governmental sources: Concern has been expressed about the interference with human rights groups or officially authorised prison visiting bodies, such as the community council of Rio de Janeiro, or conselho da comunidade, a prison inspection body made up of the authorities and civil society. The authorities reportedly placed pressure on the judge of the penal executions court, or juiz da vara de execuções penais, to replace the president of the conselho da comunidade, who was widely critical of the state’s prison system. Non-governmental sources: Oversight has been further hindered by political and judicial intervention against those few bodies that are both mandated to monitor prisons and had previously been working A/HRC/13/39/Add.6 23 In São Paulo, human rights groups were blocked from visiting the FEBEM juvenile detention system, visited by the Special Rapporteur in 2000, where it is reported that torture and ill-treatment remains widespread and systematic. Although the state authorities of São Paulo have granted There are many bodies with the legal authority to investigate prison conditions, but they have not provided adequate oversight in practice. This lack of external oversight has permitted poor prison conditions and abuses of power to continue. The law provides for a number of organs to inspect and monitor prisons. However, inmates interviewed had rarely seen or even heard of a visit by an external prison monitor. They were aware of rare visits by prison internal affairs, but no visits by a judge, prison council, or other prison oversight body (A/HRC/11/2/Add.2, paras. 47-48).