National Preventive Mechanism Fourth Annual Report 2012–13 given the full support of the Northern Ireland Policing Board and the Department of Justice (NI) has agreed to look into implementing the necessary legislative amendment required during 2014–15. In the interim, the NIPBICVS continues to monitor the number and location of detained persons held within non-designated custody suites. After identifying in 2011 that there was no independent inspection or monitoring of court custody facilities in England and Wales – in Scotland and Northern Ireland these are inspected by HMIP Scotland (HMIPS) and the CJINI – the Ministry of Justice asked HMIP to develop a programme for the inspection of these facilities. This began in 2012. In line with its existing inspection methodology, HMIP developed a set of Expectations, which describe the standards of treatment and conditions that each court custody suite should achieve for people in its custody. These are grouped under three inspection areas: leadership, strategy and planning; individual rights; and treatment and conditions. The focus is on outcomes rather than processes. From 2012–13, HMIP completed inspections in Crown Courts and magistrates’ courts with custody facilities in four regions: Cleveland, Durham and Northumbria, Merseyside and Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria, and Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. A general trend in the findings was that court managers from Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, often lacked awareness of how cells were run and how detainees were treated. HMIP also noted a lack of clarity about who should take responsibility for detainee care arising from contractual arrangements between the National Offender Management Service Prisoner Escort and Custody Services and court custody and escort contractors. 20 Case study – court custody facilities The inspection of Cleveland, Durham and Northumbria included visiting four Crown Court and 12 magistrates’ court buildings with active custody suites in the region. This first full inspection of custody suites in a court area revealed custody staff who did their best to take care of detainees, in conditions which were, in many cases, poor, and with underdeveloped approaches to assessing and managing risk and to meeting legitimate needs. Improvements to buildings will require capital spends, but there is much that can still be done. The inspection found that: • Detainees were sometimes held for relatively long periods before their case was heard because courts gave priority to other cases, or afterwards because it took time for prisons to confirm there was no other bar to release. It was welcome, however, that courts did not have cut-off times. • In most places, detainees were not given clear information about their rights or how to make a complaint, and the telephone interpreting service had almost never been used. • The physical condition of the cells area was deplorable at one particular facility, and poor at four other sites. In several places, detainees were not kept out of public view when handcuffed, especially when disembarking from vans and, for those with disabilities in particular, when being taken to or from court. • Staff were generally helpful and polite to detainees, although many treated frequently-seen faces as needing little individual attention.