A/HRC/38/30 commission of inquiry on the situation of detainees in prison settings — which operated for three months (see paragraph 34 below). 29. As part of its mandate, the Mission for Justice Support has continued to work with national authorities, including the judiciary, to find ways to reduce situations of prolonged pretrial detention. This has involved improving the capacity of judges to efficiently handle cases, including by stricter compliance with legal deadlines. The Mission for Justice Support has also been supporting efforts to strengthen case management performance by facilitating dialogue with all actors of the penal chain, including the police, prosecutors, judges and legal aid lawyers. Prison overcrowding 30. Together with prolonged pretrial detention, prison overcrowding is a major human rights concern in Haiti. Pretrial detention directly contributes to prison overcrowding and negatively affects the conditions of detention.8 Through its monitoring, the human rights component of the Mission for Justice Support has found that, in instances in which prison facilities are not available, police stations are also used to hold detainees. 31. It was noted in the 2014 draft national human rights action plan that, while the Government had attempted to address that issue, the measures adopted had proved insufficient to significantly improve the situation. Among the proposed actions, the draft action plan highlighted the need to build prisons in accordance with international standards and to adopt a legal aid programme to enable courts to process these cases swiftly. 32. Most prison facilities lack adequate sanitation and access to health care. This situation has been described by several human rights mechanisms, including the Human Rights Committee, 9 as amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Ongoing monitoring of prisons by the human rights component of the Mission for Justice Support indicates that the number of deaths in custody has increased over recent years, partly due to the lack of access to adequate health care. For example, in the Les Cayes prison, the number of deceased detainees almost doubled in one year, from 8 in 2016 to 14 in 2017. In several instances, prison authorities have reportedly failed to inform the family of the deceased detainee of the death. 33. While overcrowding and poor prison conditions affect all detainees, they have a disproportionate impact on women, children and inmates with disabilities. In prison, women and children are at heightened risk of violence and abuse. Furthermore, children are deprived of their right to education, and women’s access to health, in particular sexual and reproductive health services, is extremely limited. For example, in March 2018, through its monitoring, the human rights component of the Mission for Justice Support found that about 85 per cent of the detainees in Les Cayes 10 were in pretrial detention in the overcrowded prison. Some 25 per cent were children between the ages of 14 and 17 detained for misdemeanours such as the theft of a coconut. 34. As previously noted (see paragraph 28 above), on 25 February 2017, the Government tried to address the issue of prolonged pretrial detention with the creation of the presidential commission of inquiry on the situation of detainees in prison settings, created by President Moïse in response to the growing number of deaths in detention. On 15 May 2017, after the termination of its mandate, the commission presented a report to the Cabinet of the President. Among its findings, it observed that the average available space for detainees in Haitian prisons was 0.40 square metres and it described deplorable conditions, such as a lack of potable water, adequate food, bedding and adequate medical care for detainees with physical and mental disabilities. The mandate of the commission was not renewed and there has been no durable action taken on its findings, many of which 8 9 10 8 In 2015, the High Commissioner identified excessive recourse to pretrial detention as one of the main causes of prison overcrowding in Haiti (see A/HRC/30/19, para. 37). See CCPR/C/HTI/CO/1, para. 15. Some 574 of the 676 detainees.