Statutory Duty Compliance (Custody Records)
Request
Custody Records and PACE Code C Compliance:
1. Has your police force previously allowed (or otherwise permitted), and/or does it currently allow (or otherwise permit), the use of ellipses ("...") within custody records? Please confirm this explicitly with a 'yes' or a 'no' as your response.
Statutory Requirements and Compliance:
2. Please provide a copy of your internal guidelines, guidance, policies, and procedures that relate to the accurate and complete recording of your Force's custody records in accordance with PACE Code C.
3. Provide a copy of the specific internal directive, policy, guidance, and procedures (created and or updated within the last 5 years) that detail the permissible use of ellipses within your Force's custody records under your Force's internal guidelines and policies?
Audit and Oversight:
4. Have there been any internal or external audits, reviews, or assessments of your Force's custody record practices (within the last 10 years or alternatively, and in the public interest, such lesser period or reduced outer limit of what your Force considers to be a reasonable time- frame)? If so, please provide copies of these documents.
5. Has there been any correspondence, guidance, or instructions from oversight bodies such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) or Home Office regarding your Force's custody records? If so, please provide copies of these documents.
Additional Information:
6. Please include all disclosable correspondence, directives, or communications which you hold that clarify the permissible practices for recording information in custody records under PACE Code C.
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
The following exemptions apply to the disclosure of the information:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
I approached South Yorkshire Police Data Risk and Assurance Team. They advised:
Custody records in Connect are included in this audit regime and records of the audits exist. However, these records do not provide sufficient detail to easily identify audits involving custody records. Each audit would have to be checked for this to be determined and this would be very consuming, considering that the team performs hundreds of audits every month.
Total audit checks for the last year alone, would number 1200 plus audit checks. The data you are requesting is not recorded in an easily retrievable format and to provide the level of data you require would require a manual review of all the checks. At a conservative 4 mins per check this process would take over 80 hrs.
In essence, we would have to review and manually check all relevant audit checks to extract the level of detail of the cases that met the criteria of your request; this process would take much longer than 18 hours’ work.
The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 provide that the cost limit for non-central government public authorities is £450. This must be calculated at the rate of £25 per hour, providing an effective time limit of 18 hours.
Guidance from the Information Commissioner to public authorities is that where one part of a request is reasonably estimated to exceed the appropriate limit then the authority is not obliged to consider or comply with the remainder of the request up to the point at which the appropriate limit has been reached. Please note point 30 of the below link:
Section 16 - Duty to Provide advice and Assistance
Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, my duty to provide advice and assistance to anyone making a request for information.
Although excess cost removes the force's obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded.
I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request neither does it bind South Yorkshire Police to any commitment that it will release information in such a manner in the future.
We approached the administrator for South Yorkshire Police’s Arrest Management System, who provided us with answers for 1-3 and 6:
1. Yes. Our current (and previous) custody handling system allows for the use of all punctuation, including the use of ellipses.
2. There is no internal policy or guidance as we do not write policies that simply repeat legislation or the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice (APP). The requirement to maintain accurate custody records is already covered by PACE Code C itself, specifically paragraph 2.3, which states, ‘2.3 The custody officer is responsible for the custody record's accuracy and completeness…’. It is for the custody officer to decide whether the use of an ellipsis is correct in the context of the entry being made and allowing their use does not diminish the accuracy of a custody record.
Please note, the use of ellipsis making it clear that I am only quoting the beginning of paragraph 2.3. Paragraph 2.3 goes on to say, ‘…and for making sure the record or copy of the record accompanies a detainee if they are transferred to another police station. The record shall show the: time and reason for transfer; time a person is released from detention.’. This isn’t relevant to the question hence I replaced it with an ellipsis.
3. We have the same internal directives, policies, guidance, and procedures for the use of all punctuation – none.
6. As per question 3 – we have no such correspondence, directives, or communications because custody officers are required, by law, to record information in a custody record in compliance with PACE Code C.
We then approached the administrator for South Yorkshire Police’s Data Risk and Assurance Team, who provided us with the answer for Q4:
4. This part of the answer relates to the internal audit work undertaken within the Data Risk and Assurance Team:
The Data Risk and Assurance Team performs force system usage auditing. This is done with a view to detect and discourage misuse of force systems and information. Custody records in Connect are included in this audit regime and records of the audits exist. However, these records do not provide sufficient detail to easily identify audits involving custody records. Each audit would have to be checked for this to be determined and this would be very consuming, considering that the team performs hundreds of audits every month.
Internal auditing work relating to information governance procedures have not been undertaken in the past, but it will be in the future. We are currently in the process of arranging appropriate training for our auditors.
This part of the answer relates to audits, reviews, or assessments undertaken by either other force units/teams/functions, or external organisations and bodies such as ICO, HMICFRS, etc):
The force may have reviewed its’ custody records practices at some point in the last 10 years. The Data Risk and Assurance team has no knowledge or records relating to this.
The force has been inspected by HMIC on a number occasions in the last 10 years as part of the PEEL inspection programme. The Data Risk and Assurance team has no records relating to these inspections. However, such records may exist in other parts of the organisation. There is also the possibility that the PEEL inspection results have been published by HMICFRS and that they are in the public domain.
Finally, we approached the administrator for South Yorkshire Police’s Governance and Compliance Team, who provided us with the answer for Q5:
5. The Independent Custody Visitors (ICV) are able to check custody records when visiting detainees in Custody.
On 16 March 2020, the PCC decided to suspend all ICV activity until further notice due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
However, independent custody visiting forms an important part of the UK’s national and international duties to ensure that detention is safe and dignified. Independent custody visiting is a requirement of the UK’s duties under the Optional Protocol to the Convention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (commonly referred to as OPCAT). This is a United Nations (UN) Protocol which requires regular, independent visits to places of detention as a safeguard against ill treatment.
At that time the Home Office underlined the importance of schemes continuing to complete as much monitoring as they can safely do. Along with the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), the Home Office under the circumstances, agreed to loosen requirements on the Code of Practice to ensure that some monitoring can take place. This means that schemes are able to innovate on how they conduct their monitoring, with a greater focus on remote monitoring, during the period where the pandemic restricts physical visiting.
Taking this and guidance provided by the Independent Custody Visiting Association (ICVA) into consideration the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) developed a checklist to enable officers from the OPCC to dip sample custody records. These were then logged and monitored.
This dip sampling started on 1 April 2020, the continued until volunteers commenced physical custody visits.
Any issues found from the checking were entered onto an issues log, analysed, and fed back bi-monthly to the Chief Inspector for Custody.
Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.