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Reliance On Custody
Joe McCarthy is the Managing Director of Reliance Police Support Services. He started in June of this year, prior to that he was the Chief Executive of Cleveland Police authority for seven years. He trained as a local government accountant, has a degree in Italian history and worked in local government for seven years before joining Cleveland Police Authority.
 Custodial Review Why did you move from the Police Authority to Reliance?
Joe McCarthy It’s a fascinating time to be in this industry and it was time for a change and a challenge! I had got to know Reliance over the previous seven years as they were the service provider for much of the custody work in the area. It’s a growth industry and one that presents many challenges and opportunities.
CR What is the full extent of the involvement of Reliance in the custody sector?
JM Reliance Secure Task Management currently provides custody services in Cleveland, Sussex, Thames Valley, West Mercia, Warwickshire and Gloucester. Reliance Medical Services also provides a Forensic Medical Service to the Cleveland and Sussex custody suites giving customers high level expertise in these traditionally high risk areas as well as providing FME only services in South Wales, Durham, Cheshire and Merseyside. In total Reliance processes circa 200,000 detainees a year. In addition, through its existing prisoner escorting contract with the Ministry of Justice, Reliance transports circa 230,000 detainees per annum (incorporating “In-Court Custody”) in England and Wales.
CR What is the benefit to the Police in Reliance providing all the services a custody unit requires, including forensic medical services? And how is that benefit realised by the Police?
JM The need for medical staff in custody units is high the average nationally is around 25% but in some areas this can be as high as 60-70% of people detained by the Police need some sort of medical attention. Each custody suite needs full time nursing staff as well as custody staff. So it makes sense for the provider of custody services to provide the whole package. It’s a holistic approach, if we provide the whole package from the building, the custody staff, the services, the systems, nurses, doctors all the way through to the storage facilities we can obtain the economies of scale and pass these savings on to the purchaser. It also frees the Police from administration tasks and gets them back on the front line. These tasks are usually able to be done by civilian staff at a lower per person cost than using Police Officers or staff recruited directly by the Police.
CR How has the involvement of the private sector evolved since it commenced?
JM The private sector has continually evolved its service provision in recognition of guidelines from HMIC and Safer Detention and has been able to offer a custody service that is professional within its own right. It’s a specialist service that can offer Police Forces an opportunity to increase Police Officer operational availability and reduce the administrative burdens of Custody Sergeants. The result is that there are an increasing number of Police Forces seeking support from the private sector in how they can transform and develop their custodial services. In addition to providing the custody and medical services, the service has evolved to include identity suites, fingerprinting, DNA, and bail management. We are also moving into the storage of property. The customers are also becoming more comfortable with the idea of Reliance providing these services rather than police officers – based on the results they are seeing and the relationships that are built up in custody suites, so they are looking more positively at how we can help them with other areas.
CR Could you elaborate on what you mean by ‘An opportunity to increase Police Officer operational availability’
JM I’ll give you an example I know very well, it’s from Cleveland. Before we outsourced the Custody provision there were 36 Sergeants and 13 Police Constables in the Custody role. All the Constables and 12 Sergeants were released back to front line duties by employing Reliance staff. This created significant savings to the Police authority and put highly experienced officers back into fighting crime. The saving to Cleveland was about £300k. In addition, the Identification Suite was also contracted to Reliance which saw the further release of 1 Inspector, 2 Sergeants and 5 Constables to operational policing.
CR What other benefits are there to having dedicated civilian custody staff?
JM Many, using the same Cleveland example. The booking in times were reduced considerably, so the detainee gets a better, quicker, quality of service too. However a Police Sergeant is needed for certain statutory requirements such as charging. The civilian staff only do the functions that fall outside the statutory requirements. In addition we have greater flexibility. If a custody suite run by the Police needs additional staffing it must either call police officers in from leave and on overtime, or reduce the number of officers on the streets. In the custody suites run by Reliance we have the ability to rapidly alter staffing levels in line with the changing work load. We have a pool of trained and experienced staff we can call on and the cost of doing this is considerably lower than that of an experienced police officer. This allows the Sergeant to focus on their legal responsibilities and not become involved or distracted by administrative duties. Having staff who are focussed on these specific roles, rather than police officers who may normally be working elsewhere filling in, it also means that the staff gain more experience in the techniques used and can deliver better results. For instance in most of our custody suites we are getting around 97% accuracy on fingerprinting – that compares with 85% from before we took over in some places – so that should mean that more cases can progress without wasted time having to redo fingerprints and with greater confidence that the cases will not be stopped through lack of accurate evidence.
CR Why do you see this involvement increasing in the future?
JM There is a growing awareness in a number of Police Forces that custody provision is a specialist service and it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify the resourcing of custody suites through the withdrawal of Police Officers from operational duties to support Custody Sergeants in times of low staffing levels. Reliance can demonstrate their expertise in this service provision and work with Police Forces in identifying and providing the correct staffing levels for the facility. The workforce mix between Officers and staff and private sector providers is a key issue that HMIC now regularly reviews.
CR How do you think the spending squeeze will affect the way the custody sector acquires its services?
JM All Police Forces have had to continually balance their budgets to ensure front line services are protected as best as possible. The spending squeeze will put forces under greater pressure to review all their internal service provision, including custody. There is the potential for custody service providers to be at the forefront by working with Police Forces to identify how the potential outsourcing of custody services can provide budget stability, improved efficiency and potential savings across each Force. For instance we can give a fixed price for manning a custody suite based on the volume of people passing through it. We can clearly demonstrate via the Cleveland contract that there is close on £500k in efficiency savings being generated each year from the custody contract and that they are saving £300k a year in salary costs had they continued to run the service themselves.
CR That seems a great deal of money; however in these days of justification of spending and cuts could you be more precise about how these were realised?
JM The 500k figure is a result of booking in times being improved from 75% being booked in within 30 minutes to 97% being booked in within 30 minutes - the actual number of minutes is significantly lower than 30, but that is how we are presently measured. Therefore an officer is off the beat for less time on average in Cleveland this equated to over 17,000 hours of Police Officer time, with time released from other services such as Bail Management then almost 20,000 hours of Police Officer time is released. Turn this greater time on the beat into police hours and it equates to 500k per annum. The £300k saving is the difference between the way Cleveland Police used to operate Custody and if they were running Custody now. Its is described as a non cashable saving, it cannot be turned into cash, however it does result in a better service to the public due to greater availability of officers on front line duty. I could give you similar examples from elsewhere – for instance in Sussex we had an independent organisation come in to review the improvements we had made. They identified that the fact we had reduced waiting times down from 30 minutes to 9 minutes meant 35,000 hours of operational police time was being saved.
CR Do you charge a fixed amount per detainee, and is there a sliding scale depending on how busy it is at any particular time?
JM It’s a more flexible system than that. Our charging is based on volume; however the price is set within wide bands. If volumes stay within those bands then the cost per head remains the same. There is a time issue to it as it requires more staff to process 100 people in 2 hours than it takes to process 100 people in 12 hours. We cannot have people waiting for hours for the system to catch up. However, the busy times can usually be predicted so it is possible to design work patterns around them. This keeps cost over runs to a minimum.
CR Within the organisations where you take over the provision of custody services, what happens to existing equipment, such as fingerprint machines and breathalysers? Or do you only take over the provision of services when you have built and equipped from scratch?
JM It would be lovely if every time we took over the provision of custody services that establishment was new and so was everything in it. However that is simply not the case. So we take over the existing custody facilities as they are and adapt them if required. Existing equipment is usually absorbed into the contract during negotiations. It’s then a part of the agreement that the provider must update it according to requirements. Funding for this is either negotiated from the outset or adapted within the terms of the contract.
CR Improved efficiency is something you sell your services on. The Police have been doing this job for years, how can you be more efficient than they can?
JM It goes back to the issue of specialisation. In this instance our core business is the provision of custody services. So we are constantly looking at what we do and why. We are constantly looking at the way our staff work and how they are trained, and what equipment they are using. Because of this we can drill down into the processes and see where efficiencies can be made and service provision made more efficient. One way we do this by exchanging ideas with other custody facilities we operate. However efficiency isn’t the only driving force. We must always operate within the framework of the safer custody guidelines and doing that well is the essence of running a good custody unit. When it involves equipment we can base a purchase on its value to the service it delivers and its acquisition isn’t so dependant upon political requirements or changes in budgets. Working across a number of different forces, with one management team at the top also means we can easily share best practice between our teams – for instance all our local managers meet monthly and compare results – such as fingerprint accuracy, ID suite performance, DNA testing etc. When we identify new ideas that are working well in one force we can quickly disseminate them to the rest, either by training, updating procedures or getting those from one team to visit the other teams and share what they are doing. That means we can use our experience in all of our customers to keep driving performance and outputs up for all of them – as well as freeing officers for operational duties and delivering the service at less cost to the customer.
CR What are the advantages that the Police and courts are yet to see from Reliance?
JM In simple terms the civilianisation of any role that does not require the exercising of Police Powers by a Police Officer or by a direct employee of a Police Force has the potential to be outsourced. Reliance has already demonstrated its ability to deliver medical services, property management etc. The potential is that some of these services could be offered to other Local Crown Services or neighbouring forces, so for example property management could be expanded to include long term storage to both Courts, the CPS and the Police who all face problems in managing and resourcing this requirement. Building upon its footprint in the Criminal Justice sector, there is a natural service extension into the preparation of Case Files for Court and indeed the Control Room functions. Reliance already provides control Room Services to the Criminal Justice sector.
CR One example you made of additional savings is in the storage of materials, evidence being one of them. How can you generate these savings? After all a warehouse is a warehouse and staff are staff?
JM It’s about the management of the facility. We also specialise in storage and retrieval of items. It’s one of the things we are good at. In addition it’s a lower cost option to employ a skilled warehouse specialist than to have a police officer working in the same job. We draw our experience from the fact that we employ warehouse staff all over the country and so we also have the benefits of scale. A single Police force does not necessarily have that scale or breadth of knowledge.
CR Recruitment and training of staff, is it different because the service is being run by a private company, how do you detail working practises and lay down regulations. It’s an environment where getting it wrong could result in lives being lost.
JM The simple answer is that our staff are trained to a very high standard and it’s regularly refreshed, have career opportunities within the organisation. Within the custody environment recruitment has not been a problem. It is seen as a good career path that is rewarding and well paid. We give all custody staff a 6 week training course, both on the job and in the classroom. There is an operating manual that lays out in great detail the procedures and process that must be adhered to in a custody suite. This manual was created using guidance from HMIC and ACPO and based on the Safer Custody requirements. Each individual custody suite has its own version of that manual that has been adapted for its particular needs.
CR Who oversees the skill set that you staff have, is there a test at the end of the 6 week course? Do you have recognised qualifications for the work, such as would be recognised by Skills for Justice or a similar organisation? Would it protect and benefit the people doing the job if there were?
JM We are subject to the same regime and overseen in the same way all custody units are, by HMIC. We recently had a full inspection in Cleveland. There are NVQ’s in this work, it’s won as a result of 6 weeks of training, exams and on the job training. Working with Middlesbrough College a level 2 NVQ in Custody Management has been designed, the first course was run last year with great success it is our intention to afford staff the opportunity to gain this qualification, in addition Custody Supervisors are offered the opportunity to undertake a NVQ level3 course in first line management.( I think that a nationally recognised qualification of ‘Custody officer’ would be a good idea that would have great benefits to staff, Police and detainees. However we would not want to cramp or restrict the innovation and blue sky thinking that develops a system that is ideal for all involved. We tailor the systems and procedures to the environment that they must operate in. However as long as those benefits were not compromised then a recognised qualification would be a great use.
Thank you for talking to the Review.
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