SCOTTISH
POLICE FEDERATION
5 Woodside Place, Glasgow, G3 7QF
MEDIA
RELEASE
The Scottish Police Federation represents all police officers in the
ranks of chief inspector and below, about 15,000 people, over 98% of
all police officers in Scotland.
To:
Date:
Subject: |
Editor
8
April 2008
HMIC
Report - Custody Facilities |
The
SPF welcomes the report and recognises that the good care of people
in custody is one of the gravest and high risk tasks for the service.
We
are not surprised that HMIC has made mention of privatisation as an
alternative, as this must quite properly be part of the business planning
cycle.
However,
unlike the Reliance contract where the people who are moved are relatively
malleable as they go to court in the morning, those coming into custody
are most often drunk, drugged, agitated and/or violent.
Therefore,
the cost of outsourcing that type of problem is likely to run into many
hundreds of millions of pounds.
Instead,
keeping the tasks in house but doing what's necessary to improve the
infrastructure is likely to be markedly less expensive.
Today's
custody suites are currently staffed by police staff rather than police
officers. They do a challenging job well, as a result police officer
time is not unnecessarily taken from street duties.
For further information contact Lesley Stevenson at 5 Woodside
Place, Glasgow, G3 7QF
Telephone: 0141 332 0901 Mobile: 07967 104173 Fax: 0141 331 2436
Email: lesley.stevenson@spf.org.uk
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