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This paper explores the challenging nexus of police custody, risk and intra-organisational boundaries in the context of a recently reformed national police service. Police custody is an often-hidden aspect of policing, away from the public gaze and scrutiny. Although there is increasing recognition of the importance of rural policing (e.g. Harkness (2020); Mawby and Yarwood (2011); Ruddell and Jones (2020); Yarwood and Wooff (2016)), there has been little or no focus on rural police custody. This paper seeks to begin to redress this by focussing on the challenges faced by rural police custody in the context of large-scale organisational change.

This paper draws on data from a study funded by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (2016–2018), entitled “Measuring Risk and Efficiency in Police Custody in Scotland”. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology to develop an understanding of the varying nature of police custody across Scotland. Two contrasting case study locations were selected, one urban and one rural. 12 semi-structured interviews and 15 hours of observation were carried out. Data was transcribed, coded and analysed and thematic analysis enabled themes to be developed. This paper draws on the data from the rural custody suite.

Drawing on the theoretical framework of Giacomantonio (2014) and more recent considerations of abstract policing Terpstra et al. (2019), this paper offers insights into the ways that police custody in rural Scotland has been organised, against the backdrop of challenging organisational change. I argue that as policing services in Scotland have become increasingly “abstract” from communities, police custody as a national division has witnessed the impact of this more greatly than other parts of local policing. Intra-organisational management around staffing has led to complex management of risk, illustrating some of the challenges of national organisational change on police custody.

This paper focuses on the impact of large scale organisational change on rural police custody and intra-organisational relationships and dynamics. Rural policing is still a largely neglected area of study and rural police custody is even less understood. This paper therefore provides an original contribution by focusing on this under-researched area of policing. It also illustrates complexity around risk, staffing and management of people being held in rural police custody suites. It is therefore of value to policing scholars in other contexts, as well as rural criminology more generally. It has applicability to international contexts where macro level policing reform is occurring.

This paper investigates why mothers are losing to fathers in contested child custody battles that have occurred between 1980 and 2003. It employs quantitative, qualitative, and contextual strategies to understand the complex set of forces involved. The findings suggest that single mothers and children are increasingly trapped in a war zone between cost conscious policymakers ideologically opposed to the welfare state, angry fathers shouldering the burden of a shift from public to private transfers of funding in the form of child support, religious zealots intent on turning back the clock to a mythical patriarchal Eden, and the legal doctrine of gender neutrality reflecting these political forces.

The purpose of this research is to identify novel ways of tackling health inequalities of underserved populations. It explores the opportunities presented by the changes in health and social care legislation to employ historically underused services, such as police custody healthcare providers, in addressing health inequalities.

This research analyses the policy approaches to tackling health inequalities in the UK in the past 40 years with an emphasis on those experienced by the people detained in English police custodies. It analyses the current model of healthcare in police custody and proposes a novel integrated model of care and joint commissioning opportunities in funding it.

Policies to tackle health inequalities have largely failed, as they became entrenched. But recent changes in the health and social care legislation in England offer opportunities to address them by employing historically underused healthcare services, such as those operating in police custodies.

The research does not touch upon ethical considerations related to the patient privacy aspect of integrated care. Interventions by and interactions with police custody healthcare providers would be visible to all professionals with access to the patient’s health record. As with all novel interventions or innovative models of care, the effectiveness of such clinical interventions remains to be established by further research. It opens a new line of research on quality improvement through integration of care and explores understudied aspects of joint commissioning of integrated care.

It offers health commissioners and public health leaders the opportunity to employ police custody healthcare services in reaching their population health management objectives and meeting their health inequalities objectives at local level. It also gives police and crime commissioners the opportunity to address the health drivers of criminal behaviour that overlap with health inequalities. It offers funding opportunities presented by jointly commissioning services at lower costs to both police and health commissioners alike. It improves the health outcomes of historically underserved populations by facilitating access to health and social care services and facilities.

Reducing health inequalities and disparities in health outcomes can decrease the costs of the healthcare services over the long term and might contribute to reducing criminality by addressing inequities and some health drivers of criminal behaviour.

The paper explores understudied opportunities offered by the recent changes in health and social care legislation in England and includes underused resources to tackle health inequalities.

To document the police protective custody (PPC) process and in doing so develop a predictive model to better inform police decision makers on the factors that are more likely to result in the state maintaining custody of a child.

Data for the current study were gathered through a series of focus groups and 6,607 existing records of PPC admissions into a children's home in the Wichita Children's Home (WCH) (Kansas). Systematic predictive modeling (logistic regression) was used to differentiate between children that are likely to need continued involvement of the child welfare system and those who could remain in the custody of their families.

Documents the PPC process by which a child is referred to be housed by WCH by a law enforcement agency. Reports on the design of a decision model which identifies the factors affecting the outcome of the PPC process.

Provides recommendations for streamlining the PPC process as well as the improvement of police policies and procedures.

The issue of mental health and policing is a subject that has been debated from a number of different perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to report on the findings of a case study that explored mental health difficulties and vulnerability within police custody.

The design of the study was qualitative, and it utilised telephone, semi-structured interviews with all levels of the custody staff. This approach was taken because the aim of the study was to explore how people in different roles within the organisation worked to safeguard vulnerable people in custody.

The findings from this study identified a number of interesting themes that could be explored further in later studies. Overall, the respondents expressed frustration that vulnerable people find themselves in police custody for low-level crime, when it could have been avoided with improved mental health services in the community. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that despite the processes that are designed to safeguard the detainee, tensions still exist including, timely access to mental health assessments, appropriate training and support for staff and the use of appropriate adults.

Although the study was small in scale, the custody facility delivered detainee facilities for about 5,000 individuals per year. The research and information obtained supported the police lead for mental health to identify opportunities for improving the customer journey, as well as recognising the need for further research to identify how officers and staff relate to vulnerable individuals in contact with the police service.

Despite the limitations of the study, the findings have captured interesting data from a range of professionals working in one police custody suite, and therefore it presents a holistic overview of some key issues around mental health, vulnerability and safeguarding within the context of police custody.

The custody environment is not designed nor can it hope to meet the needs of individuals who are experiencing acute mental distress. The article reports the findings of analysis of the recorded incidents of self‐harm that occurred in the custody of one English police force during an eight‐month period in 2006. There were 168 such incidents in this period. The ratio of male/female detained persons, who harmed themselves was 3:1. The most common method used was a ligature either from the detained person's own clothes or the paper suits that are used in custody. Alcohol or substance misuse was identified as a clear risk factor. The police response is analysed and recommendations made for improved access to health care for those in custody.

The author, both an attorney and CPA, explores the complex and perhaps out‐of‐date Advisors Act Rule 206(4)‐2, the Custody Rule. He explores the rule and the obligations and concerns that arise when an investment advisor is deemed to have custody.

Stress research in the UK policing has largely neglected to account for variance in the type of psychosocial hazard officers are exposed to across policing roles, highlighting the need for role‐specific research that is capable of informing similarly specific stress reduction interventions. This study aimed to develop and assess exposure to a taxonomy of psychosocial hazards specific to the UK police custody work, consider the burnout profile of custody officers, explore relations between psychosocial hazard exposure and burnout, and compare the exposures of burned out and non‐burned out custody officers.

Preliminary focus groups identified a series of psychosocial hazards specific to the custody officer role. A questionnaire administered to custody officers within a UK territorial police force assessed exposure to these psychosocial hazards and burnout.

Twenty‐six custody‐specific psychosocial hazards were identified, across nine themes. The proportion of custody officers who reported a high degree of burnout was above that found in normative data. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that exposures were positively related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. Unrelated t‐tests showed that respondents who reported high burnout also reported significantly higher exposures across all nine psychosocial hazard themes than those with sub‐threshold burnout scores.

This is the first study to investigate the stress‐related working conditions of the UK custody officers. It provides a foundation for future large‐scale longitudinal studies concerned with validating the current findings and improving the health of officers engaged in this unique policing role.

This article describes three studies on several aspects of police custody in The Netherlands. The first study shows that the quality of accommodation, facilities, interaction and differential treatment are substandard in Dutch police stations, but dependent of the organisational size, degree of specialisation of the custodial task and extensiveness of duty‐prescriptions and registration. Detention circumstances in police stations are worse than in remand centres. The second study reveals high prevalence rates of symptoms of depression and somatisation (SCL‐90) among police custody detainees. Police custody detainees' symptom levels are higher than those in a jail population and a male general population. The third study addresses the prevalence rates of suicides and other deaths in Dutch police custody in the period 1983‐1993 and shows that the mortality rate, suicide rate and deadly poisoning rate are higher than those in remand centres and the general population. The findings of the three studies demonstrate that police custody is an area of concern.

To summarize guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) Division of Investment Management regarding Rule 206(4)-2 (the “Custody Rule”) under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

This article summarizes the SEC’s guidance on “inadvertent custody” created by broad authority in custodial agreements, custody created by standing letters of instruction, and adviser authority to transfer funds or securities between two or more of a client's accounts.

This article concludes that firms should review their existing client custodial agreements, standing letters of instruction and other arrangements carefully to determine whether they have custody and whether additional action is necessary.

This article contains information on the Custody Rule and related SEC guidance from experienced securities and financial services regulatory lawyers.