National Custody Officer Forum – Wymondham, 20 July 2011

Yesterday I gave a talk for the National Custody Officer Forum about findings from my book. Since my talk was shortly before a visit to the nearby Wymondham Police Investigation Centre which is a facility shared by Norfolk/Suffolk Constabularies and has been built through a public finance initiative (PFI), I focused on chapter six of my book on plural policing and police custody. This chapter examines the role of civilians in police custody, who are either employed by the police or by private security companies and work alongside police officers.

The use of PFIs is not unusual in police custody, though as yet I have not come across any research on how many there are up and down the country. A PFI is when the private sector work in partnership with the police to design, build and finance a police custody facility and the police pay to use it. Contracts between the police and the private sector are typically issued for 25-30 years. Sometimes the private sector also provide staff who work in the custody area, alongside custody officers (who are police sergeants). This was certainly the case in Sunnyside, the pseudonym I gave to the PFI site in my research. It contrasted with the second site in my research, Gormiston, which is a police-run custody area, involving custody officers and civilians employed by the police.

PFIs are controversial. Some are in favour, saying that they save money, in part because they open up the public sector to competition. For example, Michael Gove’s has recently supported a £2bn PFI programme for building new schools. Others are not. PFIs have been described as an “elegant piece of hire purchase”, which effectively keeps the cost of facilities ‘off the books’ (Johnston, Buttons and Williamson, 2008: 227). Moreover, there is an assumption that PFIs are cost-effective, but the evidence about whether they yield the anticipated savings remains unclear. Of course, there are also the moral objections about profit being prioritised over justice.

What is curious about these developments in relation to police custody is that they have received little public debate. For example, I just searched ‘Google News’ under the terms ‘PFI and police custody’ and ‘PFI and policing’ and this generated less than 5 ‘hits’. Yet if you search under the terms ‘prisons and privatization UK’ you generate about 18 ‘hits’. Anecdotally, when I talk to taxi-drivers, neighbours or other members of the public about what I do, nearly all are surprised to hear that police custody has been subject to this form of privatization.

Without giving away too much of what I say in my book or of what I said during my presentation yesterday, my research suggests a mixture of findings about the effects of civilianization and privatization on police, civilian police staff and suspects.

Finally, many thanks to the various people that invited me to talk and made me feel welcome yesterday. There was lots of interesting and lively discussion, which showed how fruitful conversations can be between academics and practitioners.