Custody Suite video transcript

Hi, my name is Tony Blockley. I'm the Head of Policing here at the University of Derby and welcome to our custody suite. I'm going to give you a tour of the custody suite and show you what it does here but importantly link that into the students and why we have it.The principal reason is of course that this the policing programme, is a practical programme as much as it is a theoretical programme and this custody suite allows our students to practice what they will be doing in real life.

So I'll give you a tour. You can see here we've got our custody desks. So these are exactly as you would see in a police station, they've been designed with that in mind and the booking in process so this is where people that have been arrested will come into the custody suite and then we'll go through a series of processes in terms of checking who they are searching them making sure they're safe they'll have the rights read to them, etc, etc.

So what you can see now is that there's the process of somebody being searched as they come into the custody suite. So why does this take place? The reasons are numerous really one is to ensure that they don't have the person that's coming into custody doesn't have anything on them which can cause them harm or cause somebody else some harm and also to find out if they've got any evidence hidden on them and what you'll see is any property that the person has is handed over it's booked into the custody suite for safe keeping as I say and also to prevent any harm to themselves, etc. They'll check to see if they've got any necklaces or neck chains on belts they'll be asked to take their laces out or take their shoes off and once they're satisfied that everything has been found or checked etc, etc, then the rest of the booking in process can take place.

So as the as the person has been booked into custody, they'll have a series of questions are asked of that individual you know, there'll also be a risk assessment undertaken around their safety and any medical issues they may have and then at a point in time they will be asked to sign electronically, the document that they understand and they've agreed to everything that's been said.

Okay, so once the person has been booked into custody, you know they've had their rights they've signed for everything then the officer will put them in a cell and the whole point of that is that they're putting a cell waiting to be interviewed or for whatever other reason.

So the next stage of the process is that the suspect will be brought from the the cell by the officers into one of our interview rooms and in the interview room the solicitor is already present. The officers leave the suspect with the solicitor where they have a private consultation before they go into interview. So as part of the system and the beauty of this system, is that each of the three interview rooms has a download link to one of the classrooms.

So in essence the students are interviewing their suspect in the interview room but the rest of the class are watching what they're doing in the in the classroom and that whole exercise of review and consideration and feedback from the students is a really important part of their training and learning.

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