Report raises alarm over police detention of vulnerable suspects

A report by the National Appropriate Adult Network (NAAN) has found that more than 100,000 police detentions and voluntary interviews of vulnerable adult suspects who have a mental illness, learning disability, brain injury or are autistic individuals, are carried out each year without the support of an ‘appropriate adult’.

Previous studies have indicated that as many as 39% of adults in police custody have a mental disorder or intellectual disability. Last year police recorded the need for an appropriate adult in only 6% of around 1 million police detentions and voluntary interviews of adults. The report also found that where police had no access to an organised appropriate adult scheme, they were half as likely to record an adult suspect as needing one.

Source: The Guardian

Updated translations for PACE Code H

The government has today published updated translations for the notice of rights and entitlements for terrorism detainees (PACE Code H) for every language except English and Welsh, which have previously been updated. These translations reflect the revised English language version of Code H that replaced the 2014 version in December 2018. The new translations can be found here.

Update to notice of rights and entitlements under PACE Code H

The revised version of the notice of rights and entitlements under PACE Code H have recently been published and are now in effect.

• With regard to court deicisions to extend detention – “you must be brought to court for the hearing” is now “must be brought to court for the hearing unless a television link is set up so you can see and hear the people int eh court and they can see and hear you”
• With regard to the provision of appropriate adults – “mentally vulnerable” has been widened to “vulnerable”.
• Reference to the IPCC has been amended to IOPC

Modernising the Mental Health Act – Final Report from the Independent Review

The Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983 has set out recommendations for government on how the Act and associated practice needs to change. 

The review looked at the rising rates of detention under the Act; the disproportionate number of people from BME groups detained under the act; and the processes that are out of step with a modern health care system. The final report sets out recommendations covering four principles that the review believes should underpin the reformed Act:

1. Choice and autonomy – ensuring service users’ view and choices are respected.
2. Least restriction – ensuring the Act’s powers are used in the least restrictive way.
3. Therapeutic benefit – ensuring patients are supported to get better, so they can be discharged from the Act.
4. People as individuals – ensuring patients are views and treated as rounded individuals.

The recommendations relating to policing sit under principle 4:

• By 2023/24 investment in mental health services, health-based places of safety and ambulances should allow for the removal of police cells as a place of safety in the Act, and ensure that the majority of people detained under police powers should be conveyed to places of safety by ambulance. This is subject to satisfactory and safe alternative health-based places of safety being in place.
• Ambulance services should establish formal standards for responses to section 136 conveyances and all other mental health crisis calls and ambulance commissioners and ambulance trusts should improve the fleet, including commissioning bespoke mental health vehicles.
• The responsibilities of NHS commissioners under section 140 of the Act must be discharged more consistently and more effectively, so that emergency beds are available.
• NHS England should take over the commissioning of health services in police custody.
• Equality issues, particularly police interactions with people from ethnic minority communities under the MHA, should be monitored and addressed. This should be considered under the proposed Organisational Competence Framework where possible.

Source: GOV.UK

Notice of Rights And Entitlements

Since 01/12/2018, there now exists a standardised Notice of Rights And Entitlements in English and many other languages.

The Notice Of Rights And Entitlements sets out a person’s rights and entitlements while in police detention, and is issued in accordance with PACE Code H, paragraph 3.2.

Also published was Remember your rights: voluntary interview. These rights are guaranteed under the law in England and Wales and are compatible with EU Directive 2012/13 on the right to information in criminal proceedings.

Commons Select Committee Report on Prison Standards

At the beginning of this month, the Health and Social Care Committee published its report on health and care in prison which concludes that the government is failing in its duty of care towards people detained in England’s prisons.  This conclusion has been reached due to findings of:

• Unsafe, unsanitary and outdated establishments
• Record levels of violence and self-harm
• Overcrowded cells
• Staffing shortages which severely limit prisoner opportunities for purposeful activity and access to health and care services both in and outside prisons
• Increasingly widespread use of psychoactive substances

In order to prevent the worsening health of prisoners, which should not be but is currently inherent in serving time, the report recommends:

 

• an agreed definition of equivalent care, and indicators to measure health inequalities between people in prison and the general population, which should then be reduced
• a more comprehensive and robust approach to identifying the health and care needs of people in prison and those in contact with the criminal justice system
• the Government name the date by which it expects to have enough prison officers in post to ensure the vast majority of prisoners can be unlocked for the recommended 10 hours per day
• guidance on how prisons and prison staff use incentives, making it clear that incentives should encourage prisoners to lead healthy lives and not deprive them of regular access to facilities and activities which promote a basic standard of wellbeing

 

Revised Guidance on Youth Referral Orders

Updated guidance was published early this month on referral orders for young people.  This guidance applies from 9 October 2018 and includes information on:

• The legislation setting up referral orders
• Youth offender panels and their part in the referral process
• Making the orders in court
• The role of youth offending teams
• Recruiting representative panels
• Training and supporting panel members

Inquiry into the Right to Family Life: Children Whose Mothers are in Prison

The Joint Committee on Human Rights last month launched an inquiry to learn more about the impact of the separation of children from primary carers who are imprisoned.  The committee also aims to make sure the government get things right when it introduces changes that address some of the human rights issues arising for children of prisoners.  As part of this research the committee is interested to hear from the public about how the human rights of children whose mothers are in prison are promoted and protected.  There may be a focus on a number of points in particular including:

• Whether human rights considerations are adequately articulated in current sentencing guidelines and practice
• Whether there should be a stronger presumption against custodial sentences for primary carers with dependent children
• Whether children whose primary carers are in prison are protected by current safeguarding legislation and guidance
• What the most appropriate non-custodial sentencing options are for primary carers
• How data about this group should be collected and shared.

Written submissions to the inquiry can be made here with a deadline of Friday 2^nd November 2018.

Law Society Concerns Regarding Provisions Contained in Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

The Law Society is concerned by provisions in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill that would weaken legal professional privilege and restrict access to confidential legal advice from a lawyer. Individuals who have been detained should be allowed to consult their lawyer for advice in private and without delay, and legally privileged material and information should be protected from seizure and examination by officials. This briefing sets out the Society’s key positions on the Bill.

Source: The Law Society

Prisons Condemned by Inspectors for Drugs, Violence and Suicide

Invoking an urgent notification, which requires the justice secretary to publish an emergency plan, is the most serious level of action the inspectorate can take over conditions in prisons it inspects.  In the past year this protocol has been invoked four times for Exeter, Nottingham, Birmingham and Bedford prisons due to:

• Serious incidents of violence involving weapons including prisoners throwing boiling sugar water at staff and other inmates
• Widespread and even blatant drug use and poor conditions becoming the norm to a point where prison staff do not regard these as exceptional
• A rise in inmate suicide and self-harm
• A rise in rate of assaults between prisoners

The president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA) Andrea Allbutt cites the negative conditions with a lack of funding due to and alongside government policy on prisons this decade: “We have crumbling prisons and an inability to give a safe, decent and secure regime to large numbers of men and women in our care due to lack of staff, not-fit-for-purpose contracts and a much more violent, disrespectful gang- and drug-affiliated population.”

Source: The Guardian