Public lecture over, now for some feverish writing

On Monday I gave a lecture on legal advice in the police station, which was hosted by the Centre for Criminal Law, UCL. I was presenting alongside researchers from the Legal Services Research Centre. There were over 100 people there and lots of interesting and engaging questions at the end on many different things like civilianisation and privatisation of police custody areas (yes, this has happened - see chapter six of my forthcoming book on police custody); the role of appropriate adults; the impact of the recent Cadder case in the European Court of Human Rights concerned with legal advice in the police in Scotland (where hitherto suspects did not have a right to consult with a legal adviser prior to interview - see link below); the impact of legal advice on suspect admissions of guilt. My only lament about the lecture was that the audience seemed to be comprised primarily of lawyers. It would have been really useful to have had a police perspective on things.

Now, my attention is firmly focused on the report I am writing for the Howard League about the overnight detention of juveniles in police custody. Here is an interesting quote from an inspection report jointly produced by Her Majesties Inspectorate of Constabularies and Her Majesties Inspectorate of Prisons about a police custody facilities in the Basic Command Unit of Wandsworth which is part of the Metropolitan Police Service:

We had concerns about the welfare of three children detained at Wandsworth during the inspection, aged 13, 14 and 16. They spent a considerable amount of time waiting outside in the yard before being booked in: up to two hours and 35 minutes after arrival. The children were held in custody overnight and did not speak to their parents until the next morning, pending the completion of a search of their family homes. The mothers of two of the children acted as their AA [appropriate adult] the following day but there were significant delays in calling a volunteer AA [appropriate adult] in the third case. The 16-year-old was released at midday the following day but the two younger children were interviewed almost 24 hours after their arrest and subsequently refused bail, and were then held for a second night, to be taken to court the following morning. Contact was made with the local authority out-of-hours service, to notify them that these children had been refused bail and therefore been remanded into the care of the local authority. However, no representative from the local authority attended and no accommodation was offered. Custody staff told us that they could not recall an occasion when local authority accommodation had been provided for juveniles in this situation (HMIC/HMIP, 2010c: para 5.13).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11627386

Whilst this example from Wandsworth is useful for illustrating some of the circumstances in which children and juveniles are detained overnight in the police station, it tells us little about how often this happens and whether or not the overnight detention of children and juveniles is routine. I tackle all of these issues in my forthcoming report, which is due for publication in January.