- 35 The Psychiatric Unit also had a nationwide vocation. The establishment catered mostly for mentally ill prisoners and drug addicts, both on remand and sentenced. Prisoner accommodation consisted of cells and dormitories, and the envisaged capacity was said to be in the order of 140. However, when the CPT's delegation made its visit, the Unit was holding 240 prisoners (143 designated as mentally ill prisoners and 97 as drug addicts). At the time of the delegation's visit, the health-care staff consisted of 5 part-time doctors (3 psychiatrists and 2 general practitioners), and nine nurses/hospital officers (three of whom had received some nursing training). 92. Larissa Prison is located in relatively modern premises situated on the outskirts of the city. Designed originally to hold approximately 350 remand prisoners (in primarily dormitory accommodation), the establishment had in recent years seen its tasks expand to include the accommodation of both short and long term sentenced prisoners. It had also become a place to which "troublesome" prisoners tended to be sent from other parts of the prison system. At the time of the delegation's visit, the establishment was holding in excess of 700 prisoners (including some 30 juveniles), more than two-thirds of whom were sentenced; 250 prisoners were serving terms ranging from 5 years to life imprisonment. The staff of the prison totalled 123, among which there were 95 prison officers. 93. Pavlos Melas Military Prison is situated in a military barracks located close to Thessaloniki. It accommodates servicemen on remand (for offences such as desertion, violence, insubordination, theft) as well as sentenced servicemen during the first month of their sentence (such persons subsequently being transferred to Avlona Military Prison in the Athens region). Two servicemen were in detention at the time of the delegation's visit, both awaiting trial on charges of desertion. 94. It is clear from the statistics provided above that the civil prison establishments visited by the CPT's delegation were grossly overcrowded. The Greek authorities informed the delegation that overcrowding was a nationwide problem. The number of prisoners had more than doubled over the last 12 years, a particularly sharp increase occurring in 1992; whereas the official capacity of the prison system at the time of the delegation's visit stood at 3900, the number of prisoners actually held amounted to 6700. As a result, implementation of the modern and progressive "Code of basic rules for the treatment of prisoners", adopted in 1989, was being seriously undermined. To deal with this problem the Ministry of Justice had drawn up an 18 million drachma prison building/prison extension programme covering five years, which would increase capacity by more than 1800. At the same time, various measures had been adopted or were planned which should help to reduce the prison population (conditional release after the serving of 3/5 of the sentence, instead of 2/3 as had been the rule hitherto; conversion of a part of the sentence of some prisoners into a financial penalty).