Safeguarding the welfare of detainees in police custody

John Kendall, Visiting Scholar at Birmingham Law School, writes about his Work in Progress presentation:

This seminar will look at the aftermath of arrest in the UK: detention by the police. This is a common experience for refugees everywhere. No special knowledge of UK criminal procedure is necessary for an understanding of the issues. 

The seminar explains what it is like to be detained in police custody - lengthy, boring, isolated, and risky; and why safeguards are needed. Some 25 detainees lost their lives in custody in 2017. Who is looking after the detainees? The police have that duty, but there needs to be a check. The police are largely self-regulated, and the only outsiders to get to see the detainees in their cells are custody visitors. They are volunteers, with no expertise in criminal justice. and they find it almost impossible to challenge the police. The visitors are not independent of the police, and the visitors are affected by the power of the police. The work of the visitors is ineffective, and this is the result of government policy. Radical reform is needed.

John Kendall is a retired commercial lawyer. Without any intention of writing about custody visiting, he worked as a volunteer visitor for three years. He found it puzzling, and he looked for academic treatment of the visiting scheme. As there was none, he decided to do the research himself. He wrote a PhD thesis at Birmingham University about the scheme, and his book is the result: Regulating Police Detention: Voices from behind closed doors, Policy Press 2018.

You can read more about his research here.

The seminar will be held in the student hub on the third floor of the Abercrombie building (Headington campus). Please see here for further details and for a list of the entire seminar series.