CAT/OP/BOL/3 conditions and rehabilitation, including health services, employment, the occupation of cells and clean-up activities. 35. In its jurisprudence, the Subcommittee has noted the direct correlation between corruption and the prison self-governance system. The Subcommittee is deeply concerned about the existence of entrenched corruption, which is considered “normal” by both prisoners and officials, in most of the prisons of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. 36. This corruption takes such forms as renting, selling and buying cells for amounts that vary according to their size and how comfortable they are and charging prisoners for access to public telephones, clinics or dispensaries, food, greater comforts or privacy for family visits. Economic inequalities among prisoners exacerbate the vulnerability of the weakest, who are forced to live in conditions that are tantamount to ill-treatment. Some inequalities are extreme, such as, for example, charges for the right to sleep on a mattress in Chonchocoro Prison or the operation of a sauna in San Pedro Prison. 37. The Subcommittee takes note with great concern of a significant increase in the imposition of disciplinary sanctions by prison inmate representatives. The Subcommittee is concerned about the glaring absence of safeguards against torture, given the non-legal nature of the punishments, the lack of due process for the person subject to punishment and the absence of records on the imposition of disciplinary sanctions. In Mocoví Prison and San Sebastián Men’s Prison, the Subcommittee observed an absolute delegation of authority, which included the institution of informal disciplinary regimes by inmate representatives with the tolerance or acquiescence of prison officials. 18 38. In several prisons, the police said that they were responsible only for external security, with the inmate representatives being left in control of the situation on the inside. The Subcommittee received numerous reports confirming the “absence of institutional control” in the country’s prisons. Persons deprived of their liberty indicated that prison staff could not protect them, since the guards are intimidated by the criminal gangs operating in the prisons and fear for their safety and that of their families. 39. The State’s authority has also been supplanted by the self-governance system in the area of record-keeping, with inmate representatives maintaining parallel records of cut-off dates, hearings and other information on prisoners’ legal proceedings. In one prison, it was noted that the certificate of remission of sentence was signed by the inmate representatives — a clear sign of self-government. 40. The Subcommittee is concerned about the ways in which the inmate self-governance system prevents detainees from expressing themselves freely and submitting complaints of abuse. The Subcommittee concludes that the combination of prison officials’ delegation of authority, the system of inmate self-government and corruption has heightened the possibility that persons deprived of their liberty will be victims of systemic forms of exploitation, ill-treatment and torture and may even lose their lives, with a considerable likelihood of the perpetrators going unpunished. Finally, the Subcommittee notes that the system described above totally distorts the object and purpose — i.e., rehabilitation — of custodial sentences. On several occasions, this delegation of authority was acknowledged by the prison staff, an acknowledgement that, for the Subcommittee, is an admission that the State has abdicated its responsibility to guarantee the fundamental rights of the persons in its custody. 41. The Subcommittee reiterates the recommendations concerning the system of self-government and the existence of corruption in the prison system that it made in its 2010 report.19 42. 18 19 GE.18-12272 The Subcommittee recommends that the State party: De la compulsa de los legajos de los internos se advierte que dichas sanciones escapan a revisión judicial, dado que no se ha encontrado constancia de sanciones remitidas al juez competente a fin de controlar su legalidad, cuando la obligación del representante de los internos era hacer entrega del parte de la sanción a las autoridades del penal y luego ser remitida al magistrado interviniente. CAT/OP/BOL/R.1, párr. 161. 9