 Produ THERE Home fool i Alff inhum. Morning and welcome to the 2019 meeting of the Justice Subcommittee on Placing for 2017. Apolog�we has been received from Mary Phee which is why I am chairing for today's meeting in her absence, etc. Agent item no 1 is an evidence session on Police Scotland's CUSDA provision in which the subcommittee agreed to have an evidence session on rychynu, oes refuge unig i tensi gwneud o'r cysylltynion cystodyn pedwod cael i mewn ddoch chi on i'r rai pethau. Rwy'r ffaith gennym yn F1, i ddwyngraith gyda'r clarkon, ac felly rydyn ni'n rhaid i'w ymw keine i'r cwmuno ar y cymdeithas ddiwrnol, mae'r gwaith Oedrys yn y Cymru gan Gareth Macearn. Diolch, yn ni, F1 ymwneud i'r cwmune, i ddwyne atroffurol, i ddwyne gan F1 i'r cwmp mwy—a can steel general secretary of the Scottish police federation and Michelle McCardy unison police staff scotland custody lead. Can I thank the witnesses for the written submissions, they are always tremendously helpful to the committee to receive these before actually our formal evidence session. We now move to questions and can I start by asking police scotland if they could outline in very general terms when and why a person may be taken into police custody. Mr McGee. Certainly I can, convener. Thank you. The current legislation, and that's why I may have to jump between the current legislation and the new legislation when the criminal justice act comes in, in the 25th of January of next year, but someone will be brought into police custody on two or maybe three different aspects. One is detention, so there is no evidence to substantiate an arrest at that point, but there is reasonable grounds to infer that that person may or may not have committed a crime that's punishable by imprisonment, and they can be brought into police custody for a period of detention that will enable police investigation and police interview. So there's that aspect. Another aspect is when there is a sufficiency of evidence to straight arrest, so there is, you know, corroborative evidence, other forensic evidence which then enables a straight arrest of that individual and he or she will be brought into police custody and a determination will be made whether that individual should be kept for court, caution and charged and or released for summons or bail undertaking. And the third main one is by means of a voluntary attendance, so there are individuals where they may actually take it upon themselves to voluntary attend a police station to give an account, a version of events and they'll be booked under a voluntary attendance and then they will embark or we will embark upon an interview with those individuals. So that's the three key elements off the top of my head that we would bring people into custody. And why would they be detained? So the detention would be to enable police interview or to gather other evidence which might be, for example, if there was a domestic incident in a dwelling house, you may detain one or both of the suspects for a period of time, take them to the police station which would then allow you or the officer, sorry, to maybe do some door-to-door enquiries or to try and seek other witness statements. And then thereafter, any evidence or information that they glean through their further enquiries, they would then embark upon a recorded tape recorded or notebook recorded interview with the suspect within the police station. Would there be a high level of maybe health issues included in why someone was detained, perhaps if it was certain type of behaviour? So we average roughly more currently about 150,000 people that we bring into police stations three years ago, it was 202,000 but it's now roughly about 150,000. I would say, and these are people that declare mental health and or acute alcohol or addiction services, 68 per cent of those 150,000 have declared or intimated that they have mental health, vulnerability, suicidal tendencies, addiction requirements. That's helpful because we understand that police are very often the first responders to people with these types of health problems and other behaviour. Perhaps anyone else to add anything to the custody? No, that's fully explained. Perhaps I could ask Police Scotland if there's a difference between weekend opening facilities, as described in the standard operating procedure, and contingency centres, as described in its written evidence? There is, so there's three or four key types of centres. One is a primary centre, as we would describe it, and a primary centre is a custody centre that's open 24, 7 days a week. An example would be Inverness is a primary centre, Kitty Brewster is a primary centre, Kirkcaldy, Dunferman, so we have 35 of those across the country. We have 46 ancillary centres, and ancillary centres are the tend to be in the more remote areas across the country where a person is detained or arrested or attends on a voluntary, and they are open for a period of time to enable the investigations that I've described to you. They're not open full-time, they're only open when they're required, and the contingency centres are shut almost all the time, with the exception of perhaps a major event or a significant disturbance or march, or very, very proactive enquiries that require us to open the contingencies, but that takes place in very, very extreme circumstances. I suppose I'm asking because when these centres were looked at in April 2013, then there were 42 primary, 55 ancillary, and six contingency centres representing a total of 103. Somehow, in the change of name of the weekend, we seemed to have dropped by about 18. Would there be an explanation for that? There's a number of reasons why we've reduced the estate. One is the demand that I talked about. In 2013, we had 202,000 custodies coming through the custody centres. We now roughly have about 140,000, so there's 60,000 less people, so when there's less demand, best value demonstrates for me that we have to review our estate to ensure that we're not keeping certain centres open when they're not required to do so. There are other reasons, however. Sterling is a good example where health and safety reasons we've had to shut Sterling. The fire didn't comply recently with fire regulations as well as health and safety, so we took the decision to shut that and use Falkirk, which is the co-joining centre used for the 24-7 rather than the other way about. We also talk about weekend centres. We keep the primary centres open 24-7, but our biggest demand period, not surprisingly, is at weekends, so we have a number of weekend centres that we open just for that purpose. A good example would be Levenmouth in Fife, where we have two primary centres, Cercordia and Dunferlin, and that matches the demand required Monday to Friday. On Saturday Sunday, it gets busier, so we open Levenmouth. We do the same in Dundee, where we have Perth in Dundee. We open Monday to Friday for all seven days, and then we open Arbroath on Saturday and Sunday because that's when peak demand. It's really about looking at our demand and keeping our estate and opening new estate when demand requires it. No other views about the weekend contingency and the drop on numbers? Thank you, convener. A slightly different view, not one entirely contradicting the evidence of Mr McCune. I think that we can't ignore the reality that many of these decisions were taken as a consequence of a lack of staff. The reason we have a lack of staff is because there was a requirement to save money, and because we had to save money, an awful lot of staff were paid off and their posts were made redundant. We had that kind of hob since choice of keeping facilities that we had no people for, or whether we were prepared to pay for people that we didn't necessarily have the custodies for. One of the inherent complexities of custody and custody facilities is that you don't always know when you're going to have people in them, but it's also a requirement in many cases that you have to have members of staff just in the off chance that you have people in them. Using what I consider to be fairly crude economics, the decision was taken that if you couldn't evidence that there was a member of staff required for the entire duration of the period of work, then the facility wasn't required, or the member of staff wasn't required. It's not just as simple as looking at the headcount and throughput of bodies, if you like, for lack of a general term. When the service came into being, the phenomenal pressure to save money did result in the loss of a huge number of staff, which I suspect my colleague and my vital confirm. That, in turn, had a knock-on impact on where facilities were going to be open. I think that there was some evidence when we saw the budget stuff that perhaps that was counterproductive if it was resulting in police having to travel a very long distance the time all of that entails. If we could move on. John Finnie, when you've got a supplementary. Thanks very much for your evidence. A question for your chief superintendent, McEwen, and perhaps the other panel members. It is about the challenge that there is for the police. I mean, you know, finance is an important factor and I think it would be wrong to say that it doesn't impact across the public sector. But policing is different, in fact. We always hear policing is different, and it's not as simple as supply and demand. Just to be parochial, if I may convener, if I look at cluster 3, so the Highlands and Islands, with one primary. Highland council area alone, never mind the three island areas, is the size of Belgium. Can you help me to understand the implications? I obviously don't want to ask a question or say anything that would make any of our officers out there vulnerable in any way. But, you know, if someone requires to be locked up in a wick, or foot-volume, what happens? And it's a Tuesday night. Ok, so, I mean, to police the north is absolutely unique, geography-wise, compared to the more urban and rural areas of the central belt and the west. The reality is, we have, or in cluster 3, there is one primary centre, which is in Vanessa, and then, as per the briefing note that was applied, there are a number of other ancillary stations. So, what happens, for example, in Avymor, so that's the third line down. So, if there's a police officer working in Avymor, and he or she locks somebody up, they are taken to Avymor Custody Centre, there are no Custody staff there, and neither should there be, because the chances of somebody being locked up in Avymor is relatively infrequent. So, the local policing staff there are responsible for opening up the Custody Centre and doing what needs to be done around safe search and assessment, and then they link in directly to the sergeant who's an Inverness via the telephone and give the update around the 21 risk questions that you've seen. Then there's a decision that has to be made. So, the decision, which I think is the right one, you made us agree, is if that individual is going to be kept for court, we can do one of two things. We can keep the two local policing officers off the front line in Avymor, ensuring the care and welfare for that Custody for up to 24 hours or over the weekend. For three days, that would mean two local policing officers off the street, or we could make the other decision, which is we transfer that Custody, because we know he or she's going to court, let's say, on the Monday. We transfer that Custody to Inverness, which will take up to an hour and a half, perhaps, and then the Custody gets taken there, and then the two officers are then freed up to return back to Avymor to continue serving the local community. So, that's the practice that we do it. There is one, so that's local policing. There are significant savings there for local policing officers, rather than looking after the Custody for 24 hours. But the second part, which for me is actually the most important, is the Custody, because that Custody may have acute health needs, and the only footprint that we have in the north around healthcare provision is in Inverness. That's where the nurses are, so we need to take those Custody's to Inverness to make sure that they get the necessary healthcare provision that's required. If I may press you on this one, Avymor is probably the nearest centre, with the exception of Nairn to Inverness, so that was a story, an example where the turnaround is quick. I purposely chose WIC up two plus hours away. I'm trying to understand the impact on some of the decisions, because everyone wants the best possible Custody facilities. In a previous career, I did health and safety inspections, as Mr Steele did, of premises, and we wanted the very best. There's no debate if everyone wants that and they want healthcare, but you don't need to travel to get healthcare. Healthcare can be local. It's the extent to which a policy that's imposed or entirely well-meaning what implications it has for operational policing, because if we take it to be Portree or WIC, then you're talking about the officers being away for several hours. I agree with that, but the premise is the same. You lock somebody up in WIC. If there is an early indication that that individual is unlikely to be kept for court and is going to be detained and interviewed for maybe two hours, then the Custody Sergeant Inverness will make the decision to retain that custody there and allow the local policing staff in WIC to do that investigation. If however that individual is going to be kept for court for up to 24 hours or three days, then in my view we make the right decision to convey that individual to Inverness, which might take four hours or five hours, but they're in back. After that, they freeze up the local policing officers to get back to WIC and get back doing what they should be doing, which is looking after local communities and providing a policing service. Indeed, and are those two officers their positions back filled to use the term when they are conveying that person to? No, but the reality is that in a police station, if the custody is retained in WIC, the police officers have to remain within the police station so they're not responding to calls anyway. The best solution for me is to allow that abstraction for the four hours, but then they're back in the local communities, back providing the service. I don't mean to labour the point, but the healthcare provision, that figure of 68 per cent of all custodies and they're the ones that declare their healthcare and the acute needs and vulnerabilities they have, they need to be as close in my view as they possibly can to healthcare provision. The healthcare provision in the north is in Inverness and Kitty Brewster, so for me that's where we should be putting the majority of the custodies. The point is that that's where the police healthcare is, but there's healthcare everywhere across the north of Scotland and it would be. Colleagues, we'll pick up on that. One final connected with that, if I may. Police officers are very pragmatic. They have to make decisions, important decisions regarding depriving someone of their liberty, exercising their very important power, the most important power of discretion. Has there been any assessment made of the impact of any operational decisions? It might cause someone to think, there's a lot of hassle here, I'm going to be away for five hours transporting someone to lock them up, I mean is there been a downturn? I mean we want to see the minimum number of people being detained in police custody, but we most certainly want to see everyone who should be detained in police custody, detained in police custody. If you get the balance, is there been an assessment of that? No, it's a difficult one to assess that, if the suggestion is that people are not to the cops and the front line are not taking the appropriate action. I, from my operational experience and just genuinely speaking to officers, I would be wholeheartedly surprised to say the least if they are not locking up the right people because they're fearful that it may mean a journey to a nearby custody centre and that's never been suggested to me. Do you have Mr Steele? Human nature is what human nature is, convener. I mean we have these kind of discussions regarding other elements of policing since the services come into being. The question was, you know, what's the target culture creating and an approach to encouraging stop and search. The service was saying no, we were saying that they were making stuff up and there was this merry-go-round of denial. Human nature is what human nature is. It's not necessarily whether they're going to be travelling huge distances, which they do in many, many instances in Wiccan, Rennes, Portrait and Rennes is one of them, but actually the more difficult area is not the fact that they are travelling long distances, which is a problem for reasons that I actually think Mr McEwn only began to touch on because if you have care issues then those care issues must continue to prevail. Even though you're in a vehicle and I don't think the vehicle is the most appropriate setting for delivering care and health to an individual. But some of the biggest problems come from actually the delays at custody centres and it can take very long lengths of time to get people in the door in the first place. If the normal turnaround time was from blocking someone up to lodging them in a cell was half an hour and it's now taking an hour and a half, that's a third reduction in the custody that you could have had on an ordinary night. So that kind of thing has an impact and a bearing on these kind of things. I actually think that until we start to look at the abstraction of police officers as a loss and as a cost and actually the fact that communities are losing much more than the fact that there aren't people in their communities when these things are taking place, it's not about being out there and looking after the custody, we should actually not be looking at police officers coming off the seat or transporting them at all. We should have what we used to have, police, PCSOs to undertake the kind of activity that was previously understood. But because we adopted this quite idiotic approach to identifying jobs and saying, well that is your job, therefore that is what you do, without recognition that in many people in many roles undertook a whole variety of other ancillary duties, we lost members of staff that were doing an awful lot more than just what their primary job title suggested they were doing. That in its own right is a big, big problem. The issues of human nature and the disinclined law people up, I think it's an inevitability. Police officers don't like being idle, and I don't use the term idle glibly here, but sitting for a long length of time with a custody, getting impatient when they know there's an awful lot going on and they could perhaps be doing something else is of course going to discourage people from doing that. I'm not saying that they're neglecting their duty, but those things play out into public perceptions. If people are on the streets creating disorders and they're not being seen to be getting taken away, or the consequence of taking someone away that is creating a disorder is that there is a diminished police presence for a longer length of time than would once have been the case, then that's got to be understood from a public confidence perspective as well as the care of the custody perspective. Before we move on, both Rona Mackay and I attended the old firm game, and there was certain behaviour there for the police officer who would have to take the decision. Was this someone who really had to be locked up there because they were going to go on and cause major problems? Or would a warning suffice settle down and that would not take the police officer away from where they were needed to police the rest of the game? We do understand that those decisions have to be taken, and if there's a prospect of a very long journey and hours off, then that's another factor. Rona Mackay, I'd like to ask the panel, and if I may, could I start with Eunice Bichelle, please? Are you satisfied that there are enough custody centres across Scotland to deal with the current demand? Is there a case to be made of an overall reassessment of provision? It's an interesting question. Is there enough for demand at the weekends when we open the centres? During the week, we sometimes struggle. We are moving a lot of our PCSOs around, particularly in the west area, so they don't have a base station anymore. That's primarily down to staffing levels. We do not have the number of PCSOs that we require to run the centres that we've got. The budget has been cut to such an extent that, when PCSOs have left the organisation for whatever reasons they've chosen to leave, they've never been replaced. For clarity, does a police officer apply to become a PCSO? How does that work? No, they're usually appointed to work in custody division to backfill for a gap. We're having police officers being taken off the front line doing a PCSO function alongside us. It has been until recently, on an ad hoc basis, we've had agreement that there'll be police officers, seconded custody division whilst they look at the structure, but we are needing to get the balance right so we can run with the centres without moving staff about. Calum, have you covered it a wee bit in what you said already? Yes, indeed. The issue of reduction of PCSOs is this one, which is particularly difficult. I think that it's been encouraged—it's tolerated, probably, is the correct word—where the abstraction of police officers is not seen as a cost. However, because support staff in PCSOs were an identifiable line in a budget and their salaries, the loss of PCSOs throughout the VR and ER volunteer earlier retirement was considered a financial saving, without recognising that there was a financial cost in terms of time in backfilling the vacancies that were catered by the absence of PCSOs. As I identified in my submission to the committee on financial planning just a few weeks ago, there have been a large number of reductions in the number of PCSOs. Even though there are proposals to recruit up to about 50 of them in the near future, that still leaves a huge deficiency in terms of capacity for the people who need to work in those areas. It's only when the service looks at the cost—I talk about this subject regularly—understand the true cost of policing from a holistic perspective rather than from a single-line budget perspective will we be better placed to deal with the issues that present us. In terms of the specific question as to whether we have enough custody centres, the short answer to that is no. We are a contingency service. It's been said by so many people that there are no set of circumstances that you can't seek to define the kind of circumstances that police officers will deal with. There is always a benefit, and the consequence of having the benefit is that there is a cost, but there is always a benefit in having a custody facility in as many locations as possible for the occasions when police officers need to take someone into custody. Self-evidently, given that, from my part of the world, there used to be police stations in Loch Boistelbyn, Bec, Llywodraeth, Llywodraeth, Bara, you're not going to keep people overnight in these facilities unless you absolutely have to, but it was still better to have facilities at your local station where you were able to go in and do the thing you had to do and then get out as quickly as you possibly could. In denuding the custody estate, much more time is taken in dealing with things that used to be done quicker, and that is inefficient, and that is not effective, and that does not save money. OK, thank you. Mr White, do you have any comment on the number of custody stations? No, I don't, I'm afraid. OK, that's fine. No, you don't have to. That's fine. Mr McEwen. Firstly, for the volume set out, just to pick up on Callum's point, no PCSOs have ever been afforded voluntary done set or early retirement, so just to get that clarity there, because somebody might be watching this, so PCSOs have not been allowed that. PCSO posts that have been left through resignation or retirel, not through voluntary done set. In relation to the custody centres, I genuinely believe that we do have enough custody centres, and I suppose it's maybe worthwhile to put it in perspective in the north of Scotland. There has been, since 2013, three centres that have been shut, so Bucksburn, which was 2.6 miles from Kitty Brewster, Loch Maddie in Malague, Loch Maddie's 18 miles from Benbecula and Malague is 40 miles from Fort Bolliam. So that's three centres that we have. Is there a great distance between your new film and the message? Yes, but what we have left in that area in cluster 3 is, I think, just from counting that about, maybe it's about 15 or 16 custody centres. So in total, since 2013, we have shut 18 as per my submission, but I would not shut a custody centre if I did not think we had a sufficiency of centres and cells across the country to manage the demand. The Criminal Justice Act, when that comes in in January of next year, and Lord Carlyway's presumption of liberation, I predict, albeit I can never predict the future, will see a significant reduction again in the number of custodies that we hold and have in our centres. So for me, it's about delivering the best value for the public purse, the safety mechanisms in place and the care and welfare and vulnerability plans for these vulnerable people and holding them in the bigger centres where the healthcare provision is. Mr Finlay's point earlier, just around the police healthcare provision that is not my healthcare provision, that is the national health service healthcare provision, and it's them that provide it just within our custody centres. So to answer your question, I do think that we have enough custody centres in place, and if I didn't, I would be making real positive and strong arguments to the executive to say otherwise, but I don't see the need at this time. Can I go on, please, and ask you, as a panel, if you are confident that the custody centres that we do have are fit for purpose, and I'm asking because I was quite struck by the concerns in the unison and SPF submissions about human rights impact, and I wonder if you wanted to comment on that. And just in general, things like, you know, do the centres have translation facilities, you know, healthcare professionals we've talked about? Indeed, are they subject to any form of inspection or is it just, there's a room, that's where you go, or do they have to have certain, you know, criteria? Yeah, there's a number of different criteria, so the size of the cell has to fall in line with Home Office guidance, so we build any more custody centres now, there has to be a minimum requirement around the size of the cell, et cetera, which was never in place before. We have the independent custody visiting service, which is in through the SPA, and they visit centres across the country day and night, and they are very, very active, and I did read somewhere recently that they visit, on average, nine people, nine custodies per day every year, so, you know, it's many hundreds of people that they're visiting. We have the HMICS, they did a full thematic inspection of custody provision in 2014, and now every time they do an inspection of a local policing division, we have 13 of them, they bolt on an inspection in relation to custody, they've just finished doing it in Dundee, they've done it in St Leonard's and Edinburgh, and they do it across the country. We get recommendations and improvement actions that come from there, but I can say with absolute confidence that the thematic every recommendation has now been complete, and we are still working on the odd improvement action, but we, you know, listen to what are the scrutiny that's placed upon us and strive to enhance the service provision that we provide in the custody centre. Mr White, do you have any comment on fit for purpose? I think the views of the people that I represent would not necessarily be constructive, because people find themselves in those conditions under some strain and feeling very vulnerable. I think the ideal custody suite would be a very hard thing to define, but it's good to hear about the progress that's being made to try and improve the ones that are out there. Can I ask why SPF and Unison had human rights concerns? What was the basis of that? If I may go first, convener, the concerns are not around the facilities themselves. I've made clear that where we have primary facilities, the care that we provide for custody now is incomparable to the care that was provided in the past, and the staff that work in these centres are doing a tremendous job. Indeed, to provide an additional level of assurance when it comes to the inspection regime is that the SPF, among others, has appointed safety representatives, and in conjunction with the service and also with unions, we undertake safety inspections of facilities where our members may be expected to work, and that extends to police cells also. There are continual checks on the quality of the facility. There are others that aren't as good and for reasons that have been articulated earlier on, they've been closed. Our concerns regarding the human rights come about moving people in long distances in handcuffs, in cages or insecure in the back of police vehicles and what that might be doing for them. Regardless of why they happen to come into custody, the second they're in custody, they are vulnerable people. Some of them might want to fight, some might have mental health issues, some might have psychological issues. Whatever that may be, and the notion and practice of moving people, and we do it almost every single weekend from one holding centre to another, is in its own. In my unprofessional view, but as an observer, it seems to me a fairly inhumane way to be treating human beings is to clap them in irons, drag them across the country, only for them then to be driven back a day or two later by G4S in the back of another van. That, to me, just doesn't sit right. Wether a human rights lawyer takes the view that that is entirely compatible or not, I don't know, but I feel that there is a vulnerability for my members and their health, safety and wellbeing, as well as the health, safety and wellbeing of the individuals that they're transporting, and that's where I believe the vulnerability exists. Do you have a preferred alternative? What would your alternative be to actually having to transport? Yes, absolutely. Ensure the capacity and the staff are there that that doesn't need it in the first place. It's not difficult. We've only got to go back and look at some recent examples. Prior to 2013, Edinburgh, as I've guessed because we're in the city here, had a number of police cells across the city. They dealt with their custodies in each of the particular areas. Since then, we're left with St Leonard's. St Leonard's is now dealing with the custodies for Edinburgh and the capacity and throughput in a way that it was never originally designed to do. That, in its own right, creates problems. As you all know, Scottish and Edinburgh, at least during the week, getting across Edinburgh is not an easy thing to do. Getting across many of our cities is not an easy thing to do. Those kinds of things cause problems. There is talk about closing Albroth. Albroth processes 2,500 prisoners a year. Then you're looking at distances of 80 miles to Kitty Brewster, or you're looking at comparable distances to Dundee. Those are long journeys. Those kinds of things in their own right seem to me that we're looking at it from the cash side rather than from the human right side. If we, the police service, have an absolute duty, which I think is right to look after the human rights of individuals, then you as parliamentarians have to make sure that we're not hamstrung and being able to deliver that. If that means that additional funding has to be provided for our estate through capital funding or through our staff through revenue funding, then that's an obligation that you have to discharge. Because, to my mind, the practice of moving people from east to west from St Leonard's to Clydebank or to Cathcart or to wherever it's going to be only then to move them back again doesn't, to me, sit with the way we should be treating human beings. Our comments, we are dealing with people that have very complex health needs, has been alluded to. There are, on occasions, being transported around the country, but they're being transported to centres which are running short staffed. The staff are under incredible pressure. It's widely recognised that custody is one of the highest risk areas within the force and yet we are not staffing that as we should be staffing that. We are putting staff under incredible pressure looking after people for extremely complex health needs, asking them, most PCSOs are working through their breaks to ensure that the service is delivered and that these people are looked after. That is our concern. We're not... Something has the potential to go wrong because the staff are under so much pressure looking after. Increased numbers of prisoners are coming through the door. Although the numbers in general are decreasing, they're not getting that respite because they're getting more prisoners coming through their centre than they used to do because we've got less centres and that is our concern. I want to just ask a wee bit about the process of the reception into custody. The Police Scotland evidence has given us a list of 21 questions that form part of the risk assessment by the custody supervisor. The first thing that I come upon in reading the questions is the 20 out of the 21 questions, the second word is you. In other words, they are all questions that are directed by the person in charge of the custody to the person who is being brought into custody. To what extent are the people in charge of the custody making an independent assessment of the needs of the person brought into custody or are they simply relying on what that person chooses to say? I recognise the evidence that says that if they basically don't answer, you flag everything as high priority, but I think that there's probably some middle ground between that response where people are responding but you don't necessarily and objectively probably shouldn't believe the response that you've been given. For a number of reasons people might decide not to tell us that they have had a drink in the previous 24 hours. It may well be, for example, that they are brought into custody for drink driving, so clearly it would not be in their best interest to say that they have had a drink. The custody sergeant and the PCSOs will make an assessment on how they look, their eyes, their pupils, the smell and their breath and all these different assessments will absolutely be made as part of a dynamic risk assessment, in addition to that. It's one of the benefits of being a police force now is that we have a national custody system. If you and Mr Stevenson happened to be locked up in Aberdeen one weekend and then locked up in Edinburgh the following weekend, the custody sergeant in Edinburgh has access to your notes and the files and the custody staff's observations of you when you were in Aberdeen. That was never previously available, so that absolutely enhances. In addition to that we have adverse incident forms, so had you been in Aberdeen and attempted to strangle yourself with your trousers whilst in the cell, that would be documented as per not just on the system but as an adverse incident. Then, when the next time you were to come into custody, that would be highlighted to the reception staff and they would be more aware of that. In addition to that, I mention a lot because I do think that they are vitally important. Healthcare professionals have a national IT or an IT system called ADASTRA. Should you be taken to Inverness and the healthcare professionals put certain things on the ADASTRA system, then all the primary centres where we have healthcare professionals get access to that information in addition because there will be occasions when custodies want not to tell the police something but may tell the healthcare professionals. That is on the ADASTRA system and the healthcare professionals can get access to that and can give us a gentle prompt in the right direction. The question set was subject to significant consultation externally and internally with the prison service, healthcare professionals, lay advisors and independent custody visitors. That was seen as being the best question set and the most professional and robust question set to try and allude the most honest answers from the custodies. Absolutely, we take on board that not everybody tells us the truth and we need to use other things that I have described to try and enhance our knowledge and care plan that we provide for these people. Just for the record, superintendent, thus far I have denied myself the privilege of your hospitality on the basis described although I have visited the custody suite in my constituency at Fresbra on a number of occasions but purely as an observer. Let me just, and it moves on to the second part of what I want to ask, address what to me seems to be one omission from the list of questions, which I would suggest might be have you responsibilities to other people. In other words, is this a person who has been arrested, brought into custody, who has young children at home, for whom that person might be responsible? Have they an infirm parent or whatever that they may be looking after who is dependent on them? I do not see that particularly covered there and let me just ask the other part of my question so that we can perhaps deal with it in a winner, which is the more general point is just how do you deal with making sure that other members of the family or partners or relevant people in that person's life are made aware of the detention and indeed kept up to date on the process for what may happen after detention such as for example being held for three days for court on Monday. Take the first question first. I think that there is absolutely validity in what you say. Question 21, that sort of catch all of you like, would hopefully allude if there was a parent that was brought in and kids were even picked up from school or that I would hope that that would be covered there or indeed I would hope that any parent, guardian would actually tell the police officers right away. Do forgive me if I just press it a little bit, that of course the person can say that for example if they have two young children at home then strictly speaking they may not want to tell you about it because of a potential offence associated with their leaving these children at home. I am not entirely certain that question 21, although I accept that it is a kind of catch all it seems more to be a question for the custody officers to themselves perhaps rather than people when they are under stress are not always going to think of these things. Is that a fair comment on my part? Yeah, I don't disagree with that and the second part what I was going to say there just before you came back at me was that actually I will take that away. We are forever looking to improve this question set. This is just a moment in time. There are best practice that we seek from elsewhere across the country, one being Newcastle. Actually they have a further risk assessment model that we are looking to build in that will further enhance this but I've taken a note of that and I will take that back. Sorry, could you remind me what was the second one? It was really how you communicate with important people in that person's life about what has happened and what is now going to happen. So we really have to respect the wishes of the individual. If it's a child or a juvenile up to the age of it will be 18 years of age, full stop when the new act comes in then we will tell a parent or guardian but if it's an adult and they don't want any next of kin informed then we don't tell them that's the reality behind that unless there are some really unique circumstances, significant mental health or appropriate adult, something like that that we may identify from other research then we might take the decision to do it but it's the norm we wouldn't but if they do ask us to tell them then we will the local policing staff or we will make the phone call or a personal visit. If I may, this is very important when we get to the transfer issue because the transfer has been a big discussion and the submissions but if we are looking to transfer an individual from Falkirk or St Leonard's to Falkirk or Falkirk to Greenec or wherever it may be we do adhere to really strict criteria so one is the custody is asked do you want to be transported and if they say no we will look to add to that. For this forum most times the custody does want transported because it gets them out of the cell and they're actually in a vehicle for a period of time so for them it's actually a bonus getting a transfer but we have to be compliant prisoners the whole investigative process has to be complete so there is not going to be any further interviews the decision has made that individual is going to custody so one that's relevant to your point is that we phone the lawyer and ask the lawyer or we tell the lawyer that our intention is to move this custody do they have any objections i.e. is their intention to come in and if they do then we do not move them we also tell the family so you know because family may want to hand in clothes or personal belongings so we phone the family to say is our intention to move this individual tomorrow at 2 o'clock in the afternoon do you have any reservations or any concerns and these are the sort of strict criteria that we work to so my basis and the basis of my staff is to be absolutely transparent and engaging with not just the accused person but also their family members and their lawyers before we make any decision to move these custodies anywhere sorry just the last I just one last point about the the custody numbers which hopefully the transfer numbers which might just bring this to you know put into the information I was wanting to just get the clients view from perhaps from Mr White because we've had one view I am conscious of the clock confusion as well I think I would draw our attention to the community justice Scotland process which requires consultation between statutory partners in every area including the police and also the fact that people with convictions in each area are to be consulted about the design and efficiency of the services in each area I think there's scope for some kind of additional consultation to do with the 21 questions because I didn't hear people with convictions being mentioned as the consultees and I think we have a lot to offer in this regard and it's something I offer we do this in other parts of the justice system in Scotland and it would be something we'd be happy to support because it's important that people do get a chance to contribute to things getting better many people who have been through the system want things to get better so fewer people have to be punished and that might be one way we can help just to make sure that Ms McHardy hasn't heard anything she wants to disagree with I think that the question sets have been developed over time. I think that PCSOs have become very good at dealing with people that they're booking in and they're listening to the answers that they're looking for and being able to sometimes, shall we say, read between the lines I think that much of the substance of the questions that I was going to ask has been dealt with but I just want to pick in one aspect that is in Mr White's submission to ask Ms McHardy about this and this was the community triage pilot NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Police Scotland GKNL divisions. I don't know Mr White if you want to outline what you thought of that process and if you would see benefits in that expansion I think that it would be tremendous if it was widespread across the country because I think that it addresses the issues that have been mentioned already of mental health issues and addictions in behind defending behaviour and I think that the results that have been shown from that original pilot have led to it being introduced in a number of other areas already and it's taken as good practice and as a standard practice and I think that if we could encourage that across every police force in every area in Scotland it would lead to a huge reduction in the number of people taken into custody in the first place and it would lead to a lot of people getting help very very quickly rather than waiting in a police cell for something else to happen as things get worse Are you supportive of that approach, Ms McHardy? I'm not familiar with that system, I'm afraid. No problem. Is there plans to expand it? Yes, very supportive of that and there are a number of other really positive initiatives, easy for me to say, on going across the country, safe space is one which is exactly as we described or that's been described there where people get access to a mobile telephone in private and get down there. We have private consultation and work that we do with veterans so if you've been in the armed services before and you've brought into custody there's a support network, a referral network and a counselling network in place for veterans. Future pathways support which is on going now across our custody centres which is victims of child abuse and there is a referral process and a signposting initiative in place there where these victims get the opportunity to get the support, get the counselling to try and prevent any re-offending. So there is a lot of good practice across the country. The one thing that we're trying to do now is we're trying to corral all that good practice into three strategic hubs that we're piloting currently in Falkirk, Aberdeen and Inverness and that's where the additional staff that Callum mentioned is going to be invested in to actually test these intervention processes. Pardon me. I think that the concept of community justice Scotland as a non-hierarchical leadership team is one that we have to take on board here and their primary role is to share good practice across the whole country. I think that it's very, very important that we take the learning that is within Police Scotland and spread it through all the other people involved in community justice and make sure that everyone gets a chance to contribute and participate in the process and to support the police in the work that they are doing to make sure that they can do more of the work that they have to do on the streets and in other communities. Can I just ask one specific of healthcare, Mr McEwen? If someone were to be locked up in Castle Bay in Barra for whatever reason, then to get to the primary centre in that area, and I'm assuming that they would go to the one in the division, would take at least two ferries on some considerable length of time. I'm presuming that there would, I don't know, some in the local doctor if there were healthcare issues in any case. It's not the case that you're saying that there will only be medical support in a primary location. No, so the immediate support would be with the local doctor and or you go to the local hospital. The issue with that or the long term issue with that as we find in places like Fraser Burnelgan is that sometimes the local doctors are not available and or sort of you take them to the local hospital, the police officers and the custody can be there for a number of hours until they're seen so that the priority healthcare and the fastest and most efficient is within the primary centre. I keep giving these more remote locations and you keep answering with more what I would consider urban areas part there. What happens? Someone's needing to get the jail in Barra for locked up and the storm's coming, what happens? The local doctor is summoned and he or she will arrive as soon as they possibly can. They may well, if it's something really serious, we would look to get an air ambulance out and transport that individual to the nearest hospital if it's not on the island. See, one view of all of this is that basically we've moved a single service, a new plan's been conceived for how custody's are treated and it's disregarded what was good and accepted practice prior to that. I realise that that's your point. I suppose the point that I would come back to is that since the new service we created there is only three centres in the north that has been shut. So the previous operating procedures in Wiccan elsewhere are still in place, it's just the three custody centres that I mentioned before that have been shut and no others. They're not the same if you're having folk tied up for several hours taking them somewhere else. But they only get taken somewhere else if they're going to be retained in custody for a period of days? Well, if they're locked up on a Tuesday night, they'll pay the next lawful day at Wicshire, of course. They would stay in Wiccan? They would stay in Wiccan. Yes. Okay, I'm more confused than ever now, to be honest. Do you have anything to add to that? In case you think, convener, that I'm giving you the eye, I apologise, I'm being blinded. No. To some extent I absolutely agree with the point that Mr Finney is making. Health provision used to be provided by a number of different ways. We've now moved to an approach where there is health provision within custody and that's resulted in a transfer of cash. We've also got dedicated health staff, health professionals working in some custody centres, which in high volume areas is definitely beneficial because we don't have the sight and spectacle of queues of police vehicles waiting inside accident and emergency departments anymore. But I think that to some extent we can hybridise and look at what we used to do to see if there are better solutions for some of the more sparse areas. Okay, thank you. If we can move on because I'm conscious of the clock, we're aiming to finish about 10 past. We've already covered the concerns about the lack of PCSOs and 118 vacancies, so I would want some comment on that. But it occurred to me when I was looking at some of the submissions that the single force has come up with the structure here of having a forced custody inspector, custody cluster inspectors, custody supervisors and then somewhere down the bottom of the list we've got the PCSOs. So I suppose my question is, are we a little top heavy there to the detriment of maybe putting more resources into the PCSOs who are obviously needed? Some views on that would be helpful. The structure that we have, it may sound a lot, but it's not as we have five forced custody inspectors and they work 24-7, so that is one inspector that's on for the entire of the country. That inspector is responsible for not the hour-by-hour oversight in Cairnwelfare of the Custodys, but the key decisions that are requiring to be made. You then have the 13 cluster inspectors and they are responsible for the supervision and support of their staff. Without a doubt, we have hundreds of PCSOs and police officers in our custody centres and we only have a very small number of middle and senior managers. 13 cluster inspectors and what about custody supervisors? Five FCIs, five inspectors. Forced custody inspectors five, but what about custody supervisors? That's the sergeant, so there at the primary centre, I couldn't tell you a number off the head I would predict, but I don't, at that sergeant rank, maybe 90, but I'm not sure I'd have to get back to you. It's quite good to get these figures. I could certainly do that. The vacancies, 118 vacancies, because clearly we've heard evidence that's causing problems. The vacancies, we are striving to fill a number of the vacancies. Currently, as Calum spoke about, he mentioned 50, but there's 45 new posts that were approved just last week, so that's 45 new posts that we're bringing in. We have 27, I checked this morning, 27 PCSO vacancies in my division and all of them are in transit through advert etc to get them filled. That does take a bit of time with vetting and interviews etc, but that's 27. Currently, there's work on going that may have been discussed here before, that we are looking to reform the Corporate Services division, which is the back office, college, jacked in, policy and guidance officers that do a lot of really valuable work. There was a decision by the force executive that we're going to release the officers and put them on the front line. The decision has been made that 40 of those police officers will come into my division and work on the front line within the custody services. We're moving police officers from the back office, as I say, doing support roles into the front line in the custody services. In the last three to four months, there has been some significant positive traction and momentum around custody. Can I ask how many vacancies there will still be then? You've mentioned 45 have been filled. What is the... Are we still looking at 73? No, this is where it gets a bit messy, to be honest with you, and it's all to do with IT. From 1 April 2017, and because of the available budget that was in place for police staff and police officers at that time, it was zeroed. Any vacancies from that moment on, we capture. 27 vacancies that I spoke about is what we have in PCSOs. We're recruiting an additional 45. We're getting 40 police officers from Corporate Services division and also local policing. Staff have invested a significant amount of police officers in as well. Pre-1 April 2017, there wasn't the available budget in place to replace the PCSOs as they left the organisation. There was no budget aligned to those posts and those individuals were not recruited back into the organisation. I think that's where we've got some concern, because clearly they're pivotal to making the custody centres work properly. Perhaps there's decisions and a review of that to be looked at. Callum Steele, is there anything else you want to say here? Again, I'm mindful of the time. I think it's really important to... Whilst the terminology might have been zeroed, the vacancies that existed were just simply deleted. The posts were deleted. Zeroed might be a polite way of describing it, but they no longer exist for vacancies. The issue of... I fully concede that there's been an awful lot done. No doubt about it. From where we were 18 months, two years ago to where we are now, still exponentially better, but still an awful lot more to be done, not least because of the issue that we have with officers transferring across the country with prisoners. We have, based upon years of experience, I think is the best way to describe it. We have some doubts whether those 40 officers from corporate services will be released. Those doubts are expressed by people, our members that work in the division that Mr McEwen works in. We also can't ignore the fact that taking 40 police officers from one part and putting them somewhere else is still backfilling. Whether they're supported from local policing or not, that's still backfilling. That's police officers that are not being measured as a cost because they're looked at in a different part of the budget. That's why the holistic approach and understanding as to the cost of provision of service is so important. It's not Mr McEwen's fault. That's the partial he's been given and he's the one he's holding when the music stopped. However, there needs to be a much more comprehensive appreciation that police officers don't have zero cost. I'll give you an update on just exactly where we are. 118 PCSOs have gone, deleted whatever, removed from the books, and some more, some kind of form of replacement is suggested. Towards the end of the year, when the actual final plan is looked at, could you have an undertaking from you, Mr McEwen, to send back into the committee exactly what has replaced those officers so that we can scrutinise that? I think that it's an issue that we will return to. I'm conscious of time, but very briefly, Ms McCarty, it was very struck by the concerns that you raised, Unison raised about the future of custody divisions. Could you perhaps elaborate on that? Sorry about the future of the custody division. I think that it was in your submissions inconsistency, a lack of continuity in custody suites, the number of officers coming in about lack of training and probably uncertainty surrounding the future of police stations, Custody Centre. All of that seemed to be in your submission. That's just in relation to the fact that there has been the reduction of PCSOs that has been backfilled by police officers. It can be a different police officer on a Monday, a different one on a Tuesday, so they're not there consistently. Custody is a dynamic environment. You need to be working in it on a consistent basis to be familiar. Processes do change. We do continually improve and learn within custody. I think that you said that there was a lack of inconsistency and a lack of continuity in custody suites across Scotland. Processes are consistent, but when you've got different people coming in working for one day here and one day there, when the processes are changing regularly, they're not up to speed for what's changed from the last time they were there. That puts added pressure on the PCSOs because they're needing to make them aware of the changes that have been done. There has been some work to address that and we are getting backfilled, but that's just putting a stick and plaster over the problem. Are there plans to review the structure and role of the custody division? Yes, absolutely. Michelle was right with her point. Previously, the backfill was varied and disparate, but I would say now that two months into a new model we have seconded officers in place, so there is a continuity of the same police officers working in the centres now that was previously not there. We are in a far better position now over the last two to three months than we were ever in before. In relation to where is criminal justice services division, where is custody division going in the future, yes, we have a plan. It will probably take more than seven minutes with due respect for me to tell you what that plan is, and I'd be welcome to come back any time, but we do have three pilots kicking off. That information, then, that committee would be very grateful to receive it. Can you please clarify whether Police Scotland has received any formal complaints with regard to transfers between custody centres? No, I'm aware of that. I did ask that question of my DCU this morning, just in case that I was unaware of it, but no. Nothing else to ask? Thank you very much and apologies for my arrival. I was in the chamber at him and participating in a debate. Just before I turned to the question that I was going to ask around the criminal justice act, I was just intrigued following off on the questions that John Finnie was asking with the potential transfer of those held in custody, some distances across the Highlands and Islands, what the implications are in terms of the prisoner transfer contract, presumably a fault of G4S to bring those back from custody perhaps in Inverness back to WIC or Portree or whatever the following day. The implications that one would imagine of transfers of those sorts of distances are going to have an impact on the contract. They do not have an impact on the cost of the contract because that was built into the contract, but from the G4S submission it does have an impact on their resources. I will quickly say the numbers because I think that I should have said these at the beginning because it does put it in perspective and it will just take literally 30 seconds. In 2013 I got the four weekends of November because we do not do transfers during the week, so the four weekends in November 13 compared to the four weekends that we have just had in November. In 2013 there were 79 in weekend number one, now weekend number one this year it was 17, weekend number two it was 46, in 13 currently it was 16, weekend number three in 13 it was 26, weekend number three it was 0, weekend number four it was 66, weekend number three it was 25 and that was a long public holiday that was saying Andrew's weekend that is the reason it was 25. The numbers that we are talking about 2013 compared to 2017 have reduced by 400 per cent or so we are striving to minimise transfers as much as we can. Your point might be about, you might want to ask about the act, I am convinced that when the criminal justice act comes in and the presumption of liberation that the transfers will hopefully be wiped out across the country. I did it with respect to the question of contract, the contract that we have just now is the contract that we have, but I think that we are kidding ourselves if a profit making company is not going to look at its outlays and factor that into what a future negotiation is going to be. There is no doubt that they are travelling much greater since I suspect that we were originally anticipated in the contract and that will be reflected at the future point in time, because let's be honest about it, the G4S business model is not one built in benevolence. I am involved in the negotiations for the new contract because it is 2019 that it is up and there are four companies involved and I don't want it to be public just now, but we are involved in negotiations around cost and we will see where that gets us. Calum is right, part of the discussions will be around transfers, but hopefully the numbers that I have spoken about in the new act coming in, they are very small numbers compared to the 150,000 people that we bring into custody. I think that you touched on it and probably gave an answer to it, but I am inviting Calum to give his response in terms of the criminal justice act and the provisions coming into force as of next year, giving police officers the power of investigative liberation. Is the expectation that that will reduce and if so, is there any way of quantifying that reduction, the number of those going into custody and as a result potentially being transferred to the sort of distances that we have been discussing? I think that it is the desire, like all of the things that Proof will always be in the pudding. What I think is expected also as a consequence of the new changes coming in early next year is that there will be much greater throughput because of investigative lib during the day where people are be able to return to the police station to be interviewed or for further things and that in its own right will create a different pressure and a different part of the system at a different time. Whether we end up with the same people being held in custody or not, it remains to be seen. The short answer is that I do not know. We will have to see. There are many plans and many concepts that have been developed over time that look fantastic on paper but do not work in real life. Although everyone hopes and gets to the stage where we do not bring so many people into custody, a large part of their own behaviours affect those decisions. I was going to say that it seemed to link back to the earlier point that you were making about human behaviour. Presumably, mix that with the added option that is available as of next year and while it may alter the throughput, there is an additional flexibility that allows officers to take decisions. That is where I think that looking at those things through a single lens is not particularly helpful. Public confidence plays a big role in that. Let us take a simple fighting melee in the middle of the street. It is going to be entirely possible and desirable for a police demand and capacity point if you take people into custody, allow them to calm down and then release them under bail for investigative liberation. You have to look at the public confidence side, who see those people fighting, potentially going back out and being under their nose in a relatively short space of time and how that permeates into the sense of confidence in the police to deal with things. Most members of the public will not be aware or are interested in the nuances of investigative liberation. They will not care that they have been taken to a police station, that there is going to be a process going through, that there has been some kind of assessment, that there have been some kind of conditions. They just see that they have been taken off the street by the police one minute and they are back out the next. That concludes our questioning and I thank the witnesses very much for attending. That has been an extremely worthwhile evidence session. That concludes the 19th meeting of 2017. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, 18 January 2018, when we intend to have an evidence session on HMI inspectorate of constabineries report on undercover policing.