The 'good' police custody study (GPCS)

'The GPCS: early findings', National Custody Seminar, Police Federation of England and Wales, Sergeants' Central Committee, Stoke-on-Trent, 23-24 September 2014.

Tomorrow myself and Andrew Wooff (the Research Associate on the 'good' police custody study) will be presenting some early findings from our research. Please treat them with caution, as they remain preliminary at this stage of the research; we still have a long way to go before we finish collecting and analysing the data from the study. We, nonetheless, welcome constructive feedback and comments: @drlaylaskinns or @policecustody. Without giving too much away we shall be focusing on describing the different types of custody suites we have identified, as well as the conditions of detention and the use of discretion in these different settings.

See you tomorrow.

Layla

Police custody: plus ça change?

In a recent review of my 2011 book on police custody, the eminent policing scholar, Robert Reiner, noted how fascinating it was to learn about how much (or rather how little) had changed since his own study of police custody practices in the early years of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. This is in spite of the “seemingly massive changes in the policing world, not to speak of wider society, in the intervening decades”, he says. In this review, he later notes that “[t]he overall feeling conveyed by [the book] is that for all the superficial changes at the routine operational level, plus ça change is the main theme. For all the ceaseless fashion parade of new discourses and initiatives, the everyday practice of policing is structured by macro political-economic and cultural processes that have changed in ways that intensify the patterns observed by the classic police ethnographies of the 1960s and 1970s.”

His insightful comments about the overall direction of the book through the notion of plus ça change (i.e. the idea that everything changes, yet it all stays the same), was the focus of a talk that I gave on Friday 1 November 2014 as part of the Innocence Network UK annual conference. What I argued was that aspects of policing (of relevance to police custody) have fundamentally altered for the better through the improved regulation of police custody, particularly through the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the associated Codes of Practice, but also through ECHR/ECtHR and the UK’s signature of the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (known as OPCAT), which as has led to a programme of inspections of police custody facilities by HMIP and HMIC. Improvements have also been made to the custody environment and to the kind of people who work there, which all have the potential to provide a more humane experience for suspect in the police station, through civilianization and privatization, as well as through technology such as CCTV.

However, various aspects of policing have remained unchanged including the existence of considerable amounts of police discretion which, in combination with the inherent permissibility of the law (McBarnet, 1979), enables the occupational cultures of the police to exert significant influence over police decision-making and actions. What has also remained unchanged is the role that the police occupy in society. In relatively consensual and peaceful democratic societies, this role concerns the exercise of authority backed up by the capacity (i.e. the possibility) of using force. That is, the police have at their disposal discretion about the deployment of legitimate force to control 'something-that-ought-not-to-be-happening-and-about-which-someone-had-better-do-something-now!' (Bittner, 1974).

These ‘new’ and the ‘old’ aspects of policing co-exist alongside and conflict with each other. Moreover, the clash between the new and the old has been intensified as a result of social, political and economic changes in the post-war period, which have left the police in a precarious position, as evidenced by declining trust in the police and as the police have struggled to adapt to the changing world around them.

Together this is what is meant by plus ça change and it is all manifest in police custody, a micro-cosm of policing. This was the main focus of my talk, evidenced with reference to the data that I collected in my ESRC-funded police custody study in 2006/7. In sum, custody environments are much improved, but they are still concerned with asserting power and control, as well as with the deprivation of liberty, meaning that suspects are still at risk from what I have called the ‘pains of police detention’ and are likely to experience police custody as like a ‘miniature prison’. Suspects generally have better access to rights and entitlements (such as to legal advice), but the conditions of police detention and the pressure put on them by the police and others can still lead them to waive these rights so as to ‘get it over with’ as quickly as possible. Suspects form positive relationships particularly with civilian police staff, but these can be undermined by the largely coercive relationships that they continue to have with police officers, backed up by their capacity to use force.

More conferences and talks

Last week I went to two really interesting but quite different events:

1.      A one-day event on "Policing at a time of contraction and constraint: Re-imagining the role and function of contemporary policing", which was sponsored by the British Academy and convened by Professor Andrew Millie (Edghill University) and Dr Karen Bullock (Surrey University). Speakers Robert Reiner, Ben Bowling, Nick Tilley, Mike Hough and Simon Holdaway. The focus of the event was on discussing what the role and function of the police should be, who should determine this and through what mechanisms should policing be delivered. Many thanks to Andrew and Karen for organising and inviting me to this stimulating event.

2.      A Custody Officers’ one-day seminar, run by the National Custody Officer Forum (NCF), which is affiliated to the Sergeant’s Central Committee of the Police Federation. This was the first event of its kind, which provided an interesting window into the issues that are currently significant to custody officers. For example, Michael Zander spoke about the recent Hookway case, which affected police bail decisions. Whilst the new chair of the NCF, Sgt Eddie Entwhistle, explored civilianization and privatization and its continuing impacts on custody officers.

Whilst it was less stressful to simply attend rather than present at these events, I’m also looking forward to presenting a few ideas of my own at the following conferences and events between now and Christmas:

·         Invited talk on ‘Plural policing and police custody’ at a conference on ‘Preventing deaths in police care’, which is organised by Capita, 19 October 2011. This will be attended by the police (largely Inspectors and Custody Officers) and other CJ practitioners. Unfortunately, I am unable to talk about the overnight detention of children, which is what I originally agreed to speak about.

·         Invited talk on ‘Doing research on police custody: some notes from the field’, Criminal Justice Centre, School of Law, Warwick University, 22-24 November 2011.

·         ‘Diversity, difference and vulnerability in police custody: key issues from comparative research in four common-law jurisdictions’, American Society of Criminology conference, 16-19 November, 2011, Washington, D.C.

·         Invited paper on ‘The role of the law in policing’, at a conference on ‘Tides and currents in police theories’ convened by the Flemish Centre for Police Studies and the Dutch Foundation for Society, Security and Police, 12-13 December 2011.

Why (democratic) police custody matters

Like many others I have been following the Troy Davis case carefully and wondering how and why the death penalty continues to be used in a number of states in America, whilst flying in the face of justice. As Troy Davis’ case and others like it show, the stakes are high during the police investigation, but also in police custody more generally. Around the world, police custody contributes to suspects' and victims' access to justice (e.g. it affects whether a case gets to court and whether an appropriate conviction and sentence is secured). Police custody also contributes to social justice. As Peter Manning points out in his new book, Democratic Policing, the links between crime and social inequality mean that “policing is an aspect of formal social ordering and … it operates as an agency for the redistribution of life chances in a population" (2010: xii). Drawing on Rawls’ theory of ‘justice as fairness’ and the ‘difference principle’ he argues that democratic policing should strive to minimize harm, meaning that “any action planned, stated or enacted, should not increase inequalities" (2010: 65).

It is difficult to see how police custody in a large number of states in America minimizes harm and decreases inequalities. Firstly, requirements that suspects in police custody be informed of their right to silence and to counsel - brought about by the Miranda ruling in 1966 - have been undermined and diminished by subsequent rulings by the Supreme Court and other lower courts up and down the country (Weisselberg, 2008: 1599). Secondly, police training – at least in California which was the focus of Weisselberg’s research - encourages the police to view all suspects irrespective of whether they are a child, mentally ill or intellectually impaired as capable of understanding their rights and making a reasoned choice about exercising these rights. For instance one police training manual stated that:

“Being mentally slow, uneducated, drunk, injured and/or criminally unsophisticated does not mean we cannot get a valid waiver out of a person …” (cited in Weisselberg, 2008: 1574).

Yet there is a body of social science research which shows that the Miranda warning and waiver regime is beyond the comprehension of most suspects due to their low educational base and particularly for suspects who are children, mentally ill or intellectually impaired (Weisselberg, 2008: 1576-7).

Though Weisselberg’s research focused on California, there is a great deal of consonance between his research findings and my own, albeit that my research in the U.S. took place in a large city in a different jurisdiction and was based on conversations with and observation of police officers and suspects rather than an analysis of police training manuals. Whilst I still need more time to fully analyse the data from my research in the U.S., it was clear that police officers worked on the assumption of more or less treating everyone the same, including when giving them their Miranda warnings and seeking waivers. For example, when a child was in police custody they were kept in a cell which was in a different part of the holding area to adults. However, there were no attempts to help children better understand their Miranda rights or to alleviate their fears. I was told that parental permission was mostly sought by the police to talk to the child but that nine times out of ten parents were happy for the interrogation to proceed without them attending the police station at all. Similarly, I noted this in one of my field notes:

Two young black boys were arrested for shop-lifting $50 worth of stuff. They were detained from 3.40pm to 11.30pm when they were released into their parents care. This was longer than the 10 hours. One of these boys was 10 years old and the other was 15 years old. The younger boy could hardly sign his name (USAPO2).

Overall, police practices seemed to only pay lip service to the vulnerabilities and welfare needs of children.

So what does this have to do with Troy Davis? Whilst reading and thinking about these issues I happened across an article in The Guardian on Troy Davis and unfairness in the U.S. criminal justice system, which mentioned the related case of Holly Wood. He was recently executed in Alabama, in spite of him having an IQ of 59, which is substantially lower than the IQ of most. In his case, his execution went ahead in part because his lawyer failed to raise the issue of his intellectual impairment early enough in court proceedings. What struck me about this case was that surely the earliest point to recognise such intellectual impairment is in police custody? Intellectual impairment can affect whether a suspect understands their due process rights, whether they waive them and it can increase their suggestibility during police interrogations. This means that in police custody and not just at court and beyond, the metaphorical playing field needs to be in some way levelled for all vulnerable suspects.

Here, lessons can be learned from other countries. For example, in England children in police custody should be provided with access to an appropriate adult (AA) who may be their parent, guardian or carer from the local authority accommodation where they live or a social worker or some other responsible adult aged over 18 years who is not employed by the police (Police and Criminal Evidence Act Code of Practice C, 2008: 1.7). There is also statutory requirement for local Youth Offending Teams to provide an AA service for child suspects, which is normally comprised of trained volunteers. The idea for AAs originated from the ‘Confait Case’ which highlighted that vulnerable suspects can be pressured into falsely confessing to murder (Dixon et al., 1990). This led to AAs being given the role of advising suspects, observing whether interviews are conducted fairly and properly and facilitating communication between the suspect and the police. Admittedly the research evidence is mixed about whether AAs meet the needs of children (see for example, Skinns, 2010a; Pierpoint, 2008; Jacobson, 2008: 31; Pierpoint, 2006; Pierpoint, 2004; Quinn and Jackson, 2003: 47-49; Gudjonsson, Medford and Pearse, 2003). Nonetheless the requirement for children to have an AA serves as a reminder that children and other vulnerable suspects need additional support whilst in police custody and that equality is not about treating everyone the same, rather about achieving the same impact.

So what might we conclude from this about democratic police custody? Democratic police custody matters because by levelling-off the experiences of suspects it can prevent miscarriages of justice (which is of vital importance in places where the death penalty exists), as well as preventing social injustice. That said, in some states in the U.S., police custody is not as democratic as it might and should be. It adheres to some of the principles of democratic policing such as that the police be constrained and legalistically guided in their dealing with citizens and fair in procedure” (Manning, 2010: 65-66). After all, the law permits police officers to treat all suspects as having the same capacity to understand and decide about their due process rights. However, the consequences of this are undemocratic, according to Manning’s (2010: 65) definition, in that police custody fails to minimize harms and to decrease inequality for vulnerable suspects.

NB. These musings are the beginnings of a paper I am giving on ‘Diversity, difference and vulnerability in police custody: key issues from comparative research in four common-law countries’ at the American Society of Criminology Conference, 16-19 November 2011, Washington D.C.

Conference update

I promised an update about how my conferences went, so here it is! The British Society of Criminology Conference (BSC), Northumbria University, Newcastle was a really enjoyable event, not least because there were many interesting policing panels included in the conference programme, as well as the first meeting of the newly established BSC Policing Network. The conference began with Professor Robert Reiner being presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award with many deservedly kind words being said about him. One such comment was that he knows a good thing when he sees it, which filled me with trepidation about what he might say as one of the ‘critics’ of my book. I need not have worried …well, not too much! He and the two other ‘critics’ in my ‘author meets critics panel – Professor David Dixon and Dr Megan O’Neill - were thoughtful and considered, yet probing in their comments.

In sum, the book was described as making “a significant contribution to the field”, particularly in terms of its insightfulness in the comparisons drawn between police custody and prisons. It was also described as “theoretically sophisticated” and that the drawing together of theories about governance and legitimacy were beneficial. However, my ‘critics’ would have liked a more sociological than socio-legal account, with more time being also being devoted to explaining my research methods, as well as to researching the police investigation. The comments of the reviewers should hopefully appear in book reviews in the not to distant future, including in Criminology and Criminal Justice.

After the BSC, I dashed straight off to a stop and search workshop organised by Professor Ben Bowling (KCL) and Dr Leanne Weber (Monash University). This was a truly wonderful and intellectually stimulating event which reminded me of why I am an academic. Speakers from around the world – from Canada, the USA, Japan, The Netherlands, India, South Africa and Australia to name a few - were invited to speak about stop and search practices, linking these micro-level practices to macro-level global trends such as populist punitiveness and the criminalisation of immigrants. The organisers created a truly collegiate and collaborative atmosphere, which prompted a terrific amount of thought-provoking discussion. Look out for the papers from this workshop in a special issue of Policing and Society, which is due out in a few months time.

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.

Conference season is nigh

I've got a couple of events coming up over the next few weeks. The first is on Friday 17 June. I am giving a research seminar for the Metropolitan Police Service about the findings from my study of police custody in England, based on my recently published book. The details of this talk are as follows:

The aim of this seminar it to provide feedback to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) from a recent study comparing two police custody suites, one of which is in the MPS Area. This study examined police custody from start to finish, considering who works there and what it is like for them and for the suspects who are detained there. A key focus of the study was the civilianization and privatization of police custody. Consequently, data were collected in the custody suite in the MPS, which was staffed by police officers and non-warranted civilians (designated detention officers), as well as in a custody suite in a different police service area, which had been refurbished and was managed and largely staffed by a private security company as part of a public-finance initiative. The seminar will provide a ‘flavour’ of the findings from the study, exploring conditions in police custody; staff and suspect experiences of working or being detained there; suspect access to their rights and entitlements; police and police staff roles and responsibilities and relationships with each other and with suspects; relationships between the police and other key criminal justice practitioners such as drug legal advisors, medical staff, appropriate adults and drug workers. To conclude, we will examine what can be learned from the study about improving police custody practices.

I have also organised an 'author meets critics' panel at the British Society of Criminology Conference 4-6 July at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle. The 'critics' are Professor David Dixon, University of New South Wales; Dr Megan O'Neill, University of Salford; and Professor Robert Reiner, London School of Economics. They will each offer their comments and critical reflections on my book, Police Custody: Governance, legitimacy and reform in the criminal justice process. 

Police interviews: information gathering or accusatorial?

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted, not least because I have been engrossed in teaching my new module 'Police and Policing in a Global Context', which is now drawing to a close. The last two lectures are next week.

Next week, I am also presenting a paper at the British Society of Criminology Yorkshire and Humberside branch inaugural meeting, which is being held at the University of Leeds on 11 May (see this link). The paper is about the different rights and entitlements available to police suspects on paper and in practice in four common-law jurisdictions: England and Ireland and jurisdictions in Australia and America. This paper has led me to think about why it is that different police practices become embedded and regarded as acceptable to the police, at least.

I shall give you an example. When it comes to conducting police interviews countries like England and Wales and Australia have begun to adopt an information-gathering approach to conducting police interviews which is known by its acronym, PEACE (which stands for preparation and planning, engage and explain, account, clarifcation and evaluation). Whilst Ireland and America have not, relying instead on an accusatorial approach. Here is an excerpt from one of my field notes from America, which exemplifies what an accusatorial approach means:

Later, I was introduced to one of the other white male detectives. He said to me, “So, what do you wanna know?” I hesitated. I said “what kind of practices do you use when you interview suspects”, he replied “what when we make them confess?” I said, “well, you can tell me about that if you like”. He also said that “sometimes we remove their clothes for evidentiary purposes, if you know what I mean, and leave them sitting there in their underwear. We also try to show them who’s boss because every time they want something they have to ask me. For example, if they want a drink of water they have to ask me or if they want to go to the bathroom they have to ask me.”

I then asked whether they varied their practices between suspects and how they knew which practices to use with which suspects. The detective said to me, “well, with you, for example, I would shout at you until you cried”, then, turning to his female colleague, he said, “with her I would feed her, as she’s a tough cookie and I would tried to persuade her by giving her food”.

I found this conversation extremely intimidating, although at the same time laughable because he was conforming to the stereotypical ‘bad cop’. I’m not sure if he was trying to show-off or intimidate me. Certainly, these detectives had engaged in some leg-pulling earlier, saying “oh, we hold a phone-book to their heads and then hit them”.

Later, I relayed this conversation to one of the young police officers in the custody area and he said that this team of detectives were known as ‘bad asses’

(AMEPO3).

I have whiled away many an hour in a police station as a researcher, nonetheless I found the attitudes of these 'bad ass' detectives difficult to comprehend, not least because of their short-sightedness. As it turns out there is a growing body of evidence that shows that such accusatorial interview methods are more likely to yield false confessions when compared with the information gathering approach (see the systematic review by Redlich et al. 2010).

As to the issue of why such practices had come to be regarded as acceptable in this particular jurisdiction in the US, I am struggling to find the answer. Brodeur (2010: 71) says that discretion is the hallmark of American policing, so this may contribute to a permissive environment in which such practices are allowed to flourish relatively unchecked. Moreover, historically-speaking, there has been a degree of acceptance that the police should be allowed to use some forms of 'persuasion'; the 'third degree' was soon replaced by psychological methods of persuasion and hence to this day some forms of deception are permitted in the police interview (Leo, 2008). However, I am sure there are more reasons. Answers on a postcard .....

Anyway, that's enough of my musings for now. I shall report back on how my conference paper goes down.

My forthcoming talk in Sheffield

Speaker:  Dr Layla Skinns, Lecturer in Criminology, Centre for
Criminological Research, University of Sheffield
Title:  Plural Policing and the Police Custody Process in England and Wales
Place:  The Moot Court, School of Law, Winter Street, Sheffield S3 7ND
Time:  5.15pm

Abstract:

For the last decade, the police custody process has been a neglected  area of scholarly research in England and Wales. Yet, the context of police custody has changed. Civilianization is giving way to privatization, meaning that there are a growing number of non-warranted civilians employed either by the police or private security companies to perform key tasks in the police custody process. In this talk, I draw on my recent mixed-method research in two police custody areas, one predominantly publicly-run and one predominantly privately-run. In particular, I examine the meaning of plural policing in these two sites, considering things like roles and responsibilities of police and police staff, the use of force, suspect perceptions of police staff compared to the police, as well as accountability mechanisms. One of the key conclusions is that police and civilian police staff use their authority differently, with police staff adopting a more procedurally just style of policing, whilst the police rely on more coercive strategies.

And if this is not enough to tempt to you to come along there will be mince pies and wine afterwards.

Oh yes, one last thing ..

I've been invited to give a seminar in my department. It will be part of the regular public seminar series held by the Centre for Criminological Research, School of Law, University of Sheffield (see the link below). I shall be talking about aspects of my forthcoming book. I haven't decided exactly what I will be talking about yet, but it will probably be about plural policing and police custody. Watch this space for further details.

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/law/research/clusters/ccr

Show me the way to San Francisco

What a momentous week ....

My first draft of the report for the Howard League is complete (** big sigh of relief **). I think it makes for some interesting reading. A larger proportion of juvenile suspects are detained overnight in the police station than you might expect. One of the main drivers for this seems to be difficulties with the referral process between police custody and local authority accommodation. Another interesting and probably little known fact is that in police custody 17 year olds are treated as adults, unlike in the rest of the criminal justice process where 17 year olds are treated as juveniles. Anyway, watch this space for further details of this publication. It will probably be out in January 2011.

My book on police custody is finally and definitely going to press. I've also submitted a report of my key findings on police custody in common-law jurisdictions to my funders, the British Academy.

In addition, I have submitted a co-edited book manuscript to Cambridge University Press. This book is a collection of essays taken from the Darwin College Lecture series, which I co-organised in 2010 on the theme of 'risk'. Here's the blurb for the book:

"Recent events from the economic down-turn to climate change mean that there has never been a better time to be thinking about and trying to better understand the concept of risk. In this book, prominent and eminent speakers from fields as diverse as statistics to classics, neuroscience to criminology, politics to astronomy, as well as speakers embedded in the media and in government have put their ideas down on paper in a series of essays that broaden our understanding of the meaning of risk. The essays come from the prestigious Darwin College Lecture Series which, after twenty-five years, are one of the most popular public lecture series at the University of Cambridge. The risk lectures in 2010 were amongst the most popular yet and, in essay form, they make for a lively and engaging read for specialists and non-specialists alike."

(Skinns, L., Scott, M. and Cox, T. (eds) (2011) Risk. Cambridge: CUP.)

And now, lucky me, I am heading to San Francisco to the American Society of Criminology conference. I'm giving a paper called 'Police custody in common-law jurisdictions: some early findings from a comparative study'. Here's the abstract:

Police custody acts as a bridge between the police, courts and prison and also, therefore, as a gateway to the criminal justice process. In spite of its importance, it has been a neglected area of scholarly interest with little recent research being conducted on it in England or in other common-law jurisdictions. Based on a recently completed qualitative exploratory and comparative study of England, Ireland and jurisdictions in Australia and the United States, this paper provides unique insights into key features of the police custody process. This includes important issues, such as the right to silence, access to legal advice in the police station, the tape-recording of interviews, record-keeping and the length of detention. The paper will also examine the implications for theories about due process and crime control. One of the conclusions from the research so far is that in the American jurisdiction, there was less clarity and certainty, compared to the three other jurisdictions, about how suspects should be treated in police custody, which was also suggestive of their being fewer procedural safeguards and a greater emphasis on crime control.

I'm also really looking forward to seeing San Francisco. As a criminologist, a trip to Alcatraz is a must, but the thought of clam chowder in the bay area also sounds awesome, not to mention the golden gate bridge and a few art galleries along the way. Having recently seen the film 'Milk' about the gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk, I was inspired to stay in the Castro. I'm guessing it will look a bit different to the grainy black and white images in the movie!

Forthcoming talks

I will be talking at the Centre for Criminal Law at University College London on 1 November 2010 on 'Legal advice in the police station: past, present and future'.

What better time to be talking about this given the impending cuts to the legal aid budget? Do come along if you can.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/criminal-law/index.shtml?events