7. Accommodation “We need to change this place that smells like death, that smells like a graveyard. We must change this.” Remandee, CRP 1. Introduction The state of the infrastructure of the detention facilities is an element that has an impact on the physical and mental wellbeing of prisoners during the period of imprisonment. The SMRs provide minimum standards to be followed with regard to the physical conditions of prisons and outlines the responsibilities of the State, not only to implement the minimum standards of living within prisons, but also to conduct and facilitate monitoring by MOs and Public Health Inspectors (hereinafter referred to as PHI) to ensure that the facilities continue to be of habitable state. At the onset, it must be highlighted that SMR 3 states imprisonment is afflictive ‘by the very fact of taking from these persons the right of self-determination by depriving them of their liberty and therefore the prison system shall not aggravate the suffering inherent in such a situation’. Furthermore, SMR 5 requires the prisons administration to seek to ‘minimize any differences between prison life and life at liberty that tend to lessen the respect due to prisoners’ dignity as human beings’. Both these factors must form the basis of assessing the physical conditions of detention facilities. This chapter focuses mainly on two different aspects of accommodation facilities in prisons; namely, segregation of living areas of prisoners belonging to different categories and the conditions of the accommodation facilities. 2. Segregation SMR 11101 stipulates that different categories of prisoners shall be kept in separate institutions or parts of institutions, taking account of their sex, age, criminal record, the legal reason for their detention and the necessities of their treatment. SMR 93 102 states that the purpose of classification shall be to separate those prisoners who, by reason of their criminal records or characters, are likely to exercise a bad influence, and hence to divide prisoners into classes in order to facilitate their treatment with a view to their social rehabilitation. In national legislation, Sections 178 and 183 of the SRs describe the rules for the segregation of prisoners in the male and female sections of the prison, and Section 183 specifically requires that ‘known prostitutes’ shall be kept in a separate ward by themselves. Section 9 mandates the CGP to display, for the information of the prisoners, a summary of rules relating to the classification in conspicuous places in prisons. Section 39 of DSO states that it 101 SMR 2015, r 11. 102 ibid r 93. 71