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Hi, my name is Tony Blockley. I'm the Head of Policing here at the University of Derby, welcome to our custody suite. I'm going to give you a tour of the custody suite and show you what it does here and why we have it.
The principal reason is that 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, these are exactly as you would see in a police station, they've been designed with that in mind and the booking in process. 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 and searching them making sure they're safe and have had their rights read to them, etc, etc.
*A police officer walks behind a handcuffed offender in the custody suite. They are taken to a cell. After this their handcuffs are removed and they sit in an interview room with their solicitor and two police officers. They are then taken to the reception desk. A body search is conducted.*
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 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. You'll see that any property the person has handed over is booked into the custody suite for safekeeping and also to prevent them from doing any harm to themselves.
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 then the rest of the booking in process can take place.
As the person has been booked into custody, a series of questions will be asked of that individual. There'll also be a risk assessment undertaken around their safety and any medical issues they may have and then they will be asked to sign a document electronically to indicate that they've understood and agreed to everything that's been said.
*The offender signs an electronic pad at the front desk. They are then taken back to a cell and again moved to a room for interviewing. *
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 being put in a cell to wait to be interviewed or for whatever other reason.
The next stage of the process is that the suspect will be brought from 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.
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 is watching what they're doing in the classroom. 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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