Recommendation - Suffolk Constabulary, May 2022
We identified organisational learning from a review in regard to a couple's remand in custody.
IOPC reference
Recommendations
The IOPC recommends that Suffolk Constabulary review their custody booking-in procedure to ensure that when two or more detainees are brought into custody with named (boxed) medication, these are separated, booked-in with each respective detainee and recorded on the Custody Record of the individual detainee whose medication it is.
This follows a case where an elderly couple were arrested on suspicion of fraud and harassment. They were taken into custody with their medication. On arrival into custody the medication was booked in under the male detainee's name, despite some of the boxes labelled for the female detainee. The female detainee was released from custody earlier than the male but her medication remained in custody. The female detainee is alleged to have missed her required medication and that this had a negative impact on her health.
Do you accept the recommendation?
Yes
Accepted action:
This particular recommendation has generated a lot of discussion as an SLT team. Essentially, as far as I can see I’m not in a position where we can agree/accept the recommendation as we already undertake what you recommending we do.
we already individually book in medication for each detainee, it is bagged, recorded on Athena and then placed in a medicine locker specific to that detainee. The medication lockers are denoted by cell numbers i.e. Mr SMITH in Cell A1 – his property goes in locker A1, his medication is separated and put into Medicine locker A1.
Having reviewed the complaint it appears that the custody sergeant didn’t do anything wrong in this instance. The medication that was booked in, didn’t have a name on it in the first place, so the custody sergeant wouldn’t have known which one of the couple it belonged to, all that was known as that it was physically in the possession of the male detainee. This was further exacerbated due to both detainees being uncooperative and would not tell the arresting officer who the medication belonged to, and then wouldn’t cooperate with the custody booking in procedure.