A/HRC/13/39 3. Lack of prevention 50. All too often, the safeguards required by international human rights law are either not foreseen or not effective. (a) Notification and detention records 51. The rationale behind the notification and proper recording of arrest and custody is that open knowledge about the arrest and the place of detention provides some protection against abuse. By way of notification, it is established that the person is under the authority of the State, which assumes the duty of care. Unrecorded places of detention are not permissible. Proper record-keeping is a crucial contribution to establishing accountability in case of allegations of abuse. (b) Length of police custody 52. Detainees are at a high risk of being ill-treated during the first hours of deprivation of liberty. Suspects mostly find themselves in the hands of the officers in charge of investigating the crime of which they are accused. The officers therefore have an interest in obtaining a confession or other relevant information. In order to keep this critical phase as short as possible, international human rights law requires the minimization of the period before a person is brought before a judge or another officer authorized by law to exercise judicial powers. However, suspects are frequently held in police custody for much longer than international human rights law allows, sometimes for weeks or months, and find themselves in a situation which is generally dominated by a feeling of vulnerability and fear. In many of the police stations the Special Rapporteur has visited, there was a palpable level of fear which manifested itself inter alia in the strong reluctance of detainees to speak with him. (c) Inadmissibility of evidence obtained under torture 53. The inadmissibility of evidence obtained under torture is one of the most crucial safeguards in the criminal justice system. Its purpose is twofold: firstly, given that the vast majority of torture is inflicted in the course of criminal investigations with the purpose to extract a confession, the safeguard intends to remove a prime incentive for torture; secondly, evidence obtained under torture is highly unreliable. Declaring such evidence inadmissible will help to ensure that no innocent person is convicted. Whereas, legally, most States visited seem to comply with this provision by and large, confessions and other evidence obtained under torture are more frequently admitted in legal proceedings. In most of the countries visited, the Special Rapporteur received a very high number of related allegations, which were convincingly corroborated by representatives of civil society, lawyers, local human rights experts and others. Apart from the procedural weaknesses mentioned in this section, one of the main reasons for this phenomenon appears to be the almost insurmountable credibility deficit with which suspects are confronted. In sharp contrast to the presumption of innocence, they are a priori believed to be guilty and raising torture allegations only in order to evade justice. (d) Access to a lawyer and legal assistance 54. Given that most cases of abuse take place during the very early stages of detention, immediate access to an independent lawyer is crucial. In many countries, however, detainees are arrested, interrogated and indicted without having been able to access counsel. Even access to a lawyer at a later stage remains a hypothetical option for most detainees since they lack the financial resources to pay for it. Since persons from poorer social strata make up the majority of detainees, the inability to effectively access legal aid affects the majority of persons deprived of their liberty. The lack of legal counsel is in sharp contrast GE.10-10042 13