AGXStarseed
Well-Known Member
(Not written by me)
The Appropriate Adult scheme was meant to protect mentally vulnerable detainees. But many are being interviewed by police without any support
Being taken into police custody can be a particularly traumatic experience for someone with learning disabilities. Photograph: Charles O'Rear/ Charles O'Rear/CORBIS
People with learning disabilities, mental illnesses and autism are being detained and questioned by police without appropriate support, even though this is against the law.
Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which provides the rule book for policing today, police are required to secure an “appropriate adult” for any person whom they think, or are told in good faith, may have a mental disorder or other mental vulnerability.
But research carried out and published today by my organisation, National Appropriate Adult Network, estimates that each year police may detain or interview 250,000 mentally vulnerable adults without an AA.
We found that many areas of the country have no organised AA scheme. If available, family members and carers are asked to act with no training. Police officers can spend hours searching – and they sometimes ask random people in shops, workplaces and tourist spots to fill the role.
AAs are an adjustment, not unlike providing an access ramp for people with a physical disability. Their role is to level the playing field for vulnerable people, ensuring that they can participate effectively in the justice process. AAs provide support, assist with communication, check understanding, intervene if police are not following the rules, and ensure that people can use rights such as legal advice. They uphold our values of presumption of innocence and the transparency, integrity and accountability of police.
The AA has to be “someone experienced … though if the detainee prefers a relative to a better qualified stranger … their wishes should be respected.” It’s a demanding role, often provided by trained volunteers who collectively spend hundreds of thousands of hours with detainees in custody.
Sadly, I’ve regularly heard from people whose loved ones did not benefit from this supposedly mandatory safeguard. One lady’s son has a brain condition that means he often acts or speaks before thinking. Aware of the AA role through her job, she offered to help when her son became a suspect in a burglary case. The arresting officers told her that he didn’t need one and she was not allowed to support him in the police station, leaving her worried and angry. When a woman with Asperger’s syndrome was arrested on a night out, a friend advised police of her condition. After she screamed and banged on the cell door repeatedly, they agreed to contact her husband. He wasn’t allowed to attend until the morning, when he was told he was her AA. Knowing nothing of police processes or the role, he was told to just sit quietly during the interview.
Last year, a young man with Down’s syndrome visited his school to retrieve his favourite cap, and climbed through a window when he found the school closed due to a bank holiday. He was taken into police custody for nine hours which, for someone with a mental age of between 10 and 12, is a particularly traumatic experience. Standard procedures include being locked in a small bare cell containing a toilet and CCTV camera; fingerprinting; DNA sampling and the removal of outer clothing and shoes; and often strip-searching. With few considering the long-term consequences of a criminal record, agreeing to a caution can be a tempting way to end the ordeal quickly.
After we raised the issue with the Home Office, home secretary Theresa May asked our network to report on the scale of the issue and propose solutions “to ensure that all vulnerable adults in police custody are able to receive the support they need from appropriate adults”.
This is not a new problem. The York plea rolls for the year 1212 record a case in which: “The king must be consulted about an idiot who is in the prison because in his witlessness he confessed that he is a thief, although in fact he is not to blame.”
In 1972, 760 years later, Colin Lattimore, an “educationally subnormal” 18-year-old with a mental age of eight, was convicted of manslaughter alongside two boys aged 14 and 15. Confessions were elicited after hours of interrogation and alleged intimidation by police; all without legal, parental or other adult advice. After years of incarceration, new evidence proved their innocence. A public outcry led to the 1981 Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure with the resulting AA legislation.
While our understanding (and labels) are now more sophisticated, the risks to justice remain.
Notably, police forces who can rely on organised AA schemes are around five times more likely to identify vulnerable suspects than those with no organised schemes.
Existing schemes are funded by mixtures of local authorities, health commissioners, police or police and crime commissioners. Aside from fulfilling a moral duty, these small investments return savings in the form of police efficiency, preventing miscarriages of justice and reducing the need for more expensive health and social-care interventions.
Our report, There to Help, calls for this approach to be galvanised and replicated, with all local agencies accountable for health, well-being and adult safeguarding accepting shared responsibility and co-operating to ensure that local people are supported.
The risk is that, in the face of austerity and with no single agency legally responsible, everyone washes their hands under pressure to make short-term savings. This is in contrast to AA provision for children, which is a local authority’s legal duty – and was recently extended to 17-year-olds after three children committed suicide.
We therefore need a clear commitment from central government, involving both energy and investment. The government is investing in improving identification of the mentally vulnerable in police stations, but is in danger of killing off supply just as the need for more support is uncovered.
SOURCE: http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...l-in-police-custody-without-appropriate-adult
The Appropriate Adult scheme was meant to protect mentally vulnerable detainees. But many are being interviewed by police without any support
Being taken into police custody can be a particularly traumatic experience for someone with learning disabilities. Photograph: Charles O'Rear/ Charles O'Rear/CORBIS
People with learning disabilities, mental illnesses and autism are being detained and questioned by police without appropriate support, even though this is against the law.
Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which provides the rule book for policing today, police are required to secure an “appropriate adult” for any person whom they think, or are told in good faith, may have a mental disorder or other mental vulnerability.
But research carried out and published today by my organisation, National Appropriate Adult Network, estimates that each year police may detain or interview 250,000 mentally vulnerable adults without an AA.
We found that many areas of the country have no organised AA scheme. If available, family members and carers are asked to act with no training. Police officers can spend hours searching – and they sometimes ask random people in shops, workplaces and tourist spots to fill the role.
AAs are an adjustment, not unlike providing an access ramp for people with a physical disability. Their role is to level the playing field for vulnerable people, ensuring that they can participate effectively in the justice process. AAs provide support, assist with communication, check understanding, intervene if police are not following the rules, and ensure that people can use rights such as legal advice. They uphold our values of presumption of innocence and the transparency, integrity and accountability of police.
The AA has to be “someone experienced … though if the detainee prefers a relative to a better qualified stranger … their wishes should be respected.” It’s a demanding role, often provided by trained volunteers who collectively spend hundreds of thousands of hours with detainees in custody.
Sadly, I’ve regularly heard from people whose loved ones did not benefit from this supposedly mandatory safeguard. One lady’s son has a brain condition that means he often acts or speaks before thinking. Aware of the AA role through her job, she offered to help when her son became a suspect in a burglary case. The arresting officers told her that he didn’t need one and she was not allowed to support him in the police station, leaving her worried and angry. When a woman with Asperger’s syndrome was arrested on a night out, a friend advised police of her condition. After she screamed and banged on the cell door repeatedly, they agreed to contact her husband. He wasn’t allowed to attend until the morning, when he was told he was her AA. Knowing nothing of police processes or the role, he was told to just sit quietly during the interview.
Last year, a young man with Down’s syndrome visited his school to retrieve his favourite cap, and climbed through a window when he found the school closed due to a bank holiday. He was taken into police custody for nine hours which, for someone with a mental age of between 10 and 12, is a particularly traumatic experience. Standard procedures include being locked in a small bare cell containing a toilet and CCTV camera; fingerprinting; DNA sampling and the removal of outer clothing and shoes; and often strip-searching. With few considering the long-term consequences of a criminal record, agreeing to a caution can be a tempting way to end the ordeal quickly.
After we raised the issue with the Home Office, home secretary Theresa May asked our network to report on the scale of the issue and propose solutions “to ensure that all vulnerable adults in police custody are able to receive the support they need from appropriate adults”.
This is not a new problem. The York plea rolls for the year 1212 record a case in which: “The king must be consulted about an idiot who is in the prison because in his witlessness he confessed that he is a thief, although in fact he is not to blame.”
In 1972, 760 years later, Colin Lattimore, an “educationally subnormal” 18-year-old with a mental age of eight, was convicted of manslaughter alongside two boys aged 14 and 15. Confessions were elicited after hours of interrogation and alleged intimidation by police; all without legal, parental or other adult advice. After years of incarceration, new evidence proved their innocence. A public outcry led to the 1981 Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure with the resulting AA legislation.
While our understanding (and labels) are now more sophisticated, the risks to justice remain.
Notably, police forces who can rely on organised AA schemes are around five times more likely to identify vulnerable suspects than those with no organised schemes.
Existing schemes are funded by mixtures of local authorities, health commissioners, police or police and crime commissioners. Aside from fulfilling a moral duty, these small investments return savings in the form of police efficiency, preventing miscarriages of justice and reducing the need for more expensive health and social-care interventions.
Our report, There to Help, calls for this approach to be galvanised and replicated, with all local agencies accountable for health, well-being and adult safeguarding accepting shared responsibility and co-operating to ensure that local people are supported.
The risk is that, in the face of austerity and with no single agency legally responsible, everyone washes their hands under pressure to make short-term savings. This is in contrast to AA provision for children, which is a local authority’s legal duty – and was recently extended to 17-year-olds after three children committed suicide.
We therefore need a clear commitment from central government, involving both energy and investment. The government is investing in improving identification of the mentally vulnerable in police stations, but is in danger of killing off supply just as the need for more support is uncovered.
SOURCE: http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...l-in-police-custody-without-appropriate-adult
