- 36 The Committee considers that the present system of having several operational departments within a police establishment, each with its own detention facility, should be discarded. Such a change would prove beneficial from the standpoint of the prevention of ill-treatment, as a central detention facility staffed by trained custodial officers provides better safeguards. This applies not only to the GADA, which possesses a central detention facility for adults on the 7th floor, but also to other establishments such as Agios Panteleimonas and Kypseli Police Stations. In the light of the above remarks, the CPT recommends that the cells on the 11th and 12th floors of Alexander Street Police Headquarters in Athens be permanently taken out of service. 58. The material conditions in the detention areas of most other police stations visited had not improved since the previous visit in 2013.39 Conditions can generally be characterised as poor due to a manifest lack of hygiene and maintenance. The cells themselves were generally filthy, with dirty and worn mattresses and blankets. Detained persons were usually not provided with hygiene or cleaning products. Moreover, there was no access to outdoor exercise or other occupational activities in any of the police stations visited, despite the fact that persons could be held there for several days or even weeks. As regards food, detained persons were either provided with food from the police canteen or a caterer visited twice a day, or a daily allowance of 5.87 euros was given to detained persons with which to order food. The Committee had already made it clear that the latter system is inadequate. At Kypseli Police Station, the 12m² holding room next to the duty office on the first floor was no longer used for detention purposes.40 However, the two small holding rooms of the Security Department on the third floor were still used to detain more than one person for periods of several days, despite the fact that they are entirely inadequate for this purpose. When the delegation visited the police station, two men had been held for four days in the filthy and unfurnished room, which measured some 7m². They slept on one mattress on the floor and reported that access to the toilet was problematic and that, at times, they had to urinate in a bottle. A woman, who had been kept for one night in the adjacent ante-room, claimed that she had to sleep while balancing between two swivel chairs. The delegation established that, some 17 hours after being placed in this room, she had not been provided with any food. Similarly, at Agios Panteleimonas Police Station, the material conditions in the holding cell adjacent to the duty office of the Security Department on the third floor were totally inadequate to detain persons. The cell was entirely dark, very dirty and infested with cockroaches. The cell measuring some 13m² possessed one concrete plinth and several iron benches, but no mattresses or blankets. At the time of the visit, only one person was detained in the cell, but the delegation heard several allegations from detained persons interviewed in different establishments, according to which they had been held together with up to seven other persons for several days (up to four) in this holding cell.41 39 40 41 See CPT/Inf (2014) 27, paragraphs 36-38 and 41, notably in respect of Agios Panteleimonas, Kypseli and Omonia Police Stations. At the time of the 2013 visit, it was being used to hold up to eight persons for periods lasting between several days and one month. From the registers, it was not possible to determine in which cell of the police station a particular person was detained overnight.