Layla Skinns - Police Custody

First published by Willan Publishing 2011

This edition published by Routledge 2011

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Layla Skinns 2011

The rights of Layla Skinns to be identified as the author of this book have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

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First published 2011

ISBN 978-1-84392-813-3 hardback

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

With thanks to all the fascinating people that I have encountered throughout the course of conducting the research. I am also enormously grateful for the research monies I received from the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-000-22-1719). Thanks must also go to Melony Sanders, Martin Duffy and Amber Marks for their shrewd observational skills, as well as to Zelia Gallo for her help with the data entry and, more recently, Scott Spencer, for creating a fitting book cover. The support and kindness of colleagues spanning four institutions has been exemplary. At Kings College London much thanks in the early days of the research go to Mike Hough, Paul Turnbull and Tiggey May. At the Institute of Criminology and Darwin College, University of Cambridge, my thanks go to Hilary Powell, Alpa Parmar, Nicky Padfield, Loraine Gelsthorpe and Mary Gower. From my new institution, the University of Sheffield, thanks go to Joanna Shapland, Simon Holdaway, Stephen Farrall, Gwen Robinson and Gilly Sharpe. More recently still, Andrew Sanders has provided sound words of advice and a wonderful foreword to the book. My heartfelt thanks also go to all those involved in the production of the book from start to finish, especially Brian and Julia Willan and Bill Antrobus. Last, but not least, my special thanks go to my family, particularly Jess, whose legal rows with custody officers provided a seed of an idea, and David, who read countless drafts, but particularly to my partner Matthew for his calmness, kindness and gentle encouragement throughout.

Policing is a crucial part of modern society. The police are allowed to do things that would be civil or criminal actions if ordinary people did them: bugging, forcible entry to our homes, intimate body searches, aggressive questioning and involuntary detention in usually unpleasant conditions are just some examples. At their best, these powers enable policing to protect the vulnerable from the unscrupulous. At their worst they put the vulnerable under such pressure that some people say and do things that work to their disadvantage sometimes with fatal results. Clearly we need policing, but we need to control it. This book is about one of the most important aspects of policing custody and how effectively it is controlled. It therefore goes to the heart of policing, but also raises questions about the values embedded in 21st century Britain.

Policing is rarely out of the news. It is literally a life and death matter, from the death of Ian Tomlinson after being struck by a police officer in a demonstration in 2009 to the dozens of deaths in police custody that happen every year. Yet, as Layla Skinns notes in this book, there has been little research on policing in the last 10 years or so in the UK.