E/CN.4/1997/7/Add.2 page 26 106. It should not be possible for persons to be handed over from one police or security agency to another police or security agency without a judicial order. Where this happens, the officials responsible for the transfers should be held accountable under the criminal law. No judicial orders concerning detention should be issued by administrative magistrates. 107. Police service should be removed from the ambit of political patronage and manipulation and, subject to the need for democratic accountability, be guaranteed sufficient autonomy to ensure that the police fulfil their vocation to uphold the rule of law. Mechanisms should be established to ensure that the recruitment, promotion and deployment of officers are based on professional merit. Police remuneration and training require substantial improvement. 108. Independent complaints bodies and bodies with authority to inspect any place of detention, whose members would include persons acceptable to the local community, should be established on a nationwide basis as a matter of priority. The best practices that have been established by the Pakistan authorities should be followed generally: for example, the "duty officer" system introduced in Karachi could be emulated, though it is clear that such officers would need to have such rank and status as would ensure their immunity from the authority of the station house officer. 109. Similarly, in order to protect women from custodial rape, the system introduced in Karachi of special police stations for female suspects should be expanded, so that all female suspects in Pakistan could be held in police custody only at such special stations. 110. It is essential that the judiciary exercise its responsibility for monitoring prison conditions with something like the zeal with which it is prepared to send people to overcrowded jails. In addition, the establishment of some other form of ensuring independent monitoring of prisons, with a non-governmental component, would seem to be a matter of priority. The recommendations concerning improvement of the recruitment, remuneration, training and management of members of the police service apply equally to personnel of the prison service.