Inspectorate publishes review of police custody provision.

CJI has published a follow-up review of police custody provision in Northern Ireland. View Report Page

The review was carried out in partnership with the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) in line with their responsibilities as members of the UK's National Preventive Mechanism.   It assessed practice within the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) against its legal requirements under the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989, expectations designed to meet the OPCAT principles and human rights standards and progress made against 12 recommendations for improvement contained in CJI’s original 2009 report.

 

“CJI Inspectors and colleagues from the RQIA found that custody services in general, had been delivered to an acceptable standard when compared against the assessment criteria” said Brendan McGuigan, Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice in Northern Ireland.

 

“However the inspection team also found limited progress in respect of some of the more challenging overarching recommendations, particularly in relation to achieving consistency of service delivery and moving to a centralised model for the provision of police custody services,” said Mr McGuigan.

 

Concerns were also raised in the follow-up review around the level of compliance with police service policies around the retention and storage of drugs and other prescription medication and shortcomings identified in relation to the storage and retention of out-of-date medication and forensic samples.

 

In view of the limited progress made to date, the Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice indicated CJI Inspectors colleagues from RQIA planned to carry out a full inspection of police custody facilities during 2013-14.