feeding and medical care for detainees are therefore moderately catered for. Their improvement is a constant source of concern for the prison’s administration. Respect legal deadlines for pre-trial detention and take legislative, administrative and other measures to reduce overcrowding in the prisons. 430. Based on the fact that the staff of the national guard in charge of surveillance and management of prisons did not receive adequate training, the Government decided to turn to the establishment of a specialized body with the passage of Law No. 2017-09 of 31 March 2017 on the independent status of staff of the Prison’s Administration. In order to give effect to this law, the Ministry of Justice launched two (2) competitive entrance examinations for recruitment of one hundred and eighty (180) officers for the inspectors and controllers’ corps of the specialized prison staff. Finally, 131 candidates are currently receiving prior theoretical military training. The establishment of this new corps would improve prisoner file management systems, particularly in terms of control of the duration of detention, applications for release on parole etc.… 431. The intake capacity of 40 prison facilities in Niger is 10.055 places. As at 1 October, 2019, 10497 persons were in detention, including 4390 convicted persons and 6107 on remand. The high number of pre-trial detainees is due to the slow pace of processing of case files and that is the reason why the Ministry of Justice is brainstorming about the development of a plan designed to reduce overcrowding in prisons. This overcrowding does not affect all the prison facilities. Some of them have reached 400% of their capacity such as the Niamey Central Prison which is supposed to house 445 inmates, and which, as at 1 October 2019, had 1457 inmates. On the other hand, there are others which have not yet reached half of their capacity (for example Kollo and Mayahi). 432. Table No. 7 below provides a detailed situation of inmates in all the prison facilities with genderdisaggregated statistics as well as details on minors and adults, pre-trial detainees and convicts as at 1 October 2019. 87