A/HRC/4/40/Add.4 page 21 83. Among the pretrial detainees held under the old criminal procedure code there is one category whose detention is particularly arbitrary: persons found not guilty by the first instance court of the charges on which they have been deprived of their liberty for years, who now continue to be detained for years more because the prosecution has appealed the acquittal. The Working Group is relieved to have learned of two recent decisions of the Supreme Court in the case of four men in this situation ordering that they should be released. Despite these Supreme Court judgements, it does not appear that the other detainees in the same tragic situation will be released as an immediate consequence of the Supreme Court rulings. Their detention, which can only be qualified as arbitrary, thus continues. F. Corruption 84. The Working Group expresses its concern with regard to the circumstance that despite the honesty of many professionals and officials in the administration of justice, corrupt practices would appear to continue to exist and are not fought with the necessary force and effectiveness. According to the 2006 Human Development Report for Honduras, less than a fifth of the population has trust in the justice system, with trust levels particularly low in rural areas and among the poorer population groups.2 85. Both during meetings with officials and representatives of civil society, the Working Group received numerous allegations of corruption among the judiciary. It has moreover become clear that in the detention centres detainees have to make payments to the prison police in order to exercise their most basic rights and protect themselves against arbitrary detention, for instance in order to see the judge, to be handed the judgement in their case, to file an appeal. G. Detention of members of youth gangs (maras) 86. As other Central American societies, Honduras is plagued with the phenomenon of the violent youth gangs (maras), which terrorize the population with extortion, robberies, and murders, the latter particularly in the fight between the two main gangs, the MS and the Mara 18. 87. Many countries deal with organized crime in its varied forms (from mafia to terrorist organizations) by making the membership itself of the criminal group a criminal offence, in addition to all the forms of criminal participation in offences perpetrated by the group, and international human rights law (e.g. art. 22 of the ICCPR) certainly allows for this. Article 332 of the Criminal Code, governing the offence of “illicit association” and commonly referred to as the ���ley anti-maras”, is therefore not on its face incompatible with human rights law, although doubts can be expressed as to whether a term of imprisonment of 12 to 20 years is necessary in a democratic society for simple membership in a mara. 88. The practical application of article 332, however, does raise serious concerns. The police (as well as the general public and mara members themselves) identify mara members by the tattoos they bear, highly visibly, all over their body. As membership of an “illicit association” is a continuous offence, a tattooed young man or woman is permanently in flagrante delicto, and can be arrested by the police at any time without warrant and could be immediately rearrested upon release.