Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.This is a mixed methods data collection. Since the 1980s, police custody areas have become multi-professional contexts involving solicitors, 'appropriate adults', forensic medical examiners and drug workers. Increasingly, they also involve members of the extended police 'family', i.e. civilians appointed as detention officers and custody officers and employed either by the police or private security companies. Previous research has shown that multi-professional partnerships can involve a mixture of co-operation and contest due to different occupational cultures, working practices, organisational priorities and levels of power and status. Therefore the aim of this research was to examine how these various police custody workers co-operate with each other, and the impact (if any) on detainees' access to the services they require and their experiences of police custody. In addition, the research examined how the police custody process has been affected, if at all, by civilianisation and privatisation and the implications for governance and accountability. The research compared two police custody areas, with similar levels of throughput (c.12,000 custody episodes per year); one site, in a London borough, was predominantly publicly run, and the other, in a city in the South-East of England, was predominantly privatised. Further information on methodology can be found in the study user guide. The dataset comprises 22 interviews with detainees and 28 interviews with staff, across the two research sites. The quantitative file comprises custody record data for 883 cases during the research period, across the two sites. Users should note that, while the qualitative interview transcripts are available to registered users, the quantitative custody record data file included in this study is currently subject to conditional access, in that it requires agreement from the depositor before individual access...