PRISONERS IN POLICE CELLS [NACRO, August 1991]
01 January 1991
PRISONERS IN POLICE CELLS [NACRO, August 1991]
bacdoc September 1991
The Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1980 was the
first statute allowing remanded and sentenced prisoners to be
held in police cells, though this confirmed a previously
existing common law power. During the four month national
prison officers' dispute from October 1980 to February 1981,
large numbers of prisoners were held in police custody,
reaching a high of 4,028 on 19 January 1981. Some of these
prisoners were held in police stations while others were held
in cells below courts.
The pressure of numbers on the prison system - at times
combined with industrial action by prison officers and the
destruction of prison cells in riots - has meant that police
and court cells have been used (mainly for remand prisoners)
for most of the last decade. This practice has been a source
of continuing concern to the police, prison and probation
services, the magistracy, justices' clerks and the legal
profession.
The average daily number of prisoners held in police and court
cells was 47 in 1982; 310 in 1983; 54 in 1984; 45 in 1985; 119
in 1986; 537 in 1987; 1,103 in 1988; 117 in 1989; and 969 in
1990. On Friday 23 August 1991 the number was 1,557.
Conditions for prisoners in police cells
Police and court cells are not designed to hold prisoners for
extended periods. Despite the efforts of police officers to
make conditions tolerable in very difficult circumstances,
facilities for exercise, washing, bathing and visits are
frequently entirely inadequate.
In his report on the 1990 prison disturbances, published in
February 1991, Lord Justice Woolf described conditions in
police cells in Manchester as follows:
`The Inquiry visited the prison cells at Manchester (the
Central Detention Centre). While police officers appeared to
be doing their best to make the prisoners' conditions
tolerable, the conditions were in fact wholly unacceptable.
The night before the Inquiry's visit, 101 prisoners had been
held in 73 police cells. The cells had no natural light, they
were small, they had an objectionable smell, they were
overheated and without sanitation. The amount of exercise
which the prisoners could have each day was limited to 20
minutes. The exercise area was a cage of modest size on a flat
roof patrolled from above by a doghandler. The prisoners spent
the major pan of the day locked in their cells. They were not
allowed radios. When the Inquiry visited, some remand
prisoners had been in the cells for over two weeks' (paras.
11.153, 11.154).
In a report on Greater Manchester Police, published in February
1991, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary said:
`Police cells are confined, lack basic equipment, and are
designed to accommodate prisoners for only a short period
of time. Exercise facilities are extremely basic and do
not provide for long term stays. The provision of
visitor accommodation is totally unsatisfactory, and set
periods of free association are well nigh impossible.
These factors merely serve to emphasise the
inappropriateness of detaining such prisoners in police
stations' (para 4.46).
Even more cramped are court cells, which are designed for
prisoners to sit in during the day and which (unlike police
station cells) are not designed for an overnight stay.
Numbers in 1991
The number of prisoners held in police and court cells on the
first Friday of each month so far this year is as follows:
4 January 504
1 February 604
1 March 673
5 April 633
3 May 516
7 June 598
5 July 1,049
2 August 1,165
The number has tripled since the beginning of May (from 516
on 3 May to 1,557 o