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Police want mobile jail cells to deal with protesters
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Wednesday August 1, 2007
The Guardian

The police are pressing to be allowed to use mobile holding cells to deal with major protests at defence bases and to set up short-term jails to deal with football hooligans at sports grounds.

A Home Office consultation paper, released last night, shows that despite opposition from magistrates and lawyers, there is widespread police support for a change in the law to allow "short-term jails" to be set up inside stores such as Selfridges and Tesco to deal with shoplifters.

Some forces, including the Metropolitan police, Kent and the Ministry of Defence police want to go further with mobile holding cells being used "at key trouble spots" to deal with large-scale disturbances or protests, to save officers taking suspects to sometimes distant police stations.
The MoD police have told ministers they need the mobile cells to thwart protesters outside remote defence bases who, they say, allow themselves to be arrested so they draw frontline officers away from target areas.

The proposal for short-term "jails" in supermarkets was backed in the Home Office consultation by the British Retail Consortium, who told ministers it should be compulsory for retail shopping centres to provide these facilities as long as they operate according to strict criteria.

The Met say they are already considering allowing the temporary detention of prisoners for shoplifting in department stores and they want to expand the process to the arrest of football supporters.

But the idea has alarmed the Magistrates' Association, which said it serious concerns about the use of accommodation other than a police station.

"Anyone detained and therefore losing liberty must have the same rights and safeguards as they would at a designated police station. The overall impression is that speed is being put before the individual and is a downgrading to the entire approach to crime," the magistrates said.

The Criminal Law Solicitors' Association was also critical and was worried that if the cells were set up they would be abused and become overcrowded.

"If someone is to be detained, they should be detained properly and humanely," it said.

A Home Office consultation paper, released last night, shows that despite opposition from magistrates and lawyers, there is widespread police support for a change in the law to allow "short-term jails" to be set up inside stores such as Selfridges and Tesco to deal with shoplifters.

to save officers taking suspects to sometimes distant police stations.

Are they expecting to be making mass arrests???

Not worried about the public finally revolting over all the BS we've had over the years???

Why do they need cells in superstores when shoplifting is now a FPN offence? It'd be difficult to exceed the £200(?) limit of the FPN without a shopping trolley.



Roost. Chickens. Home.

If so many stations hadn't been shut, and in Kent a lot of the smaller ones, such as Gillingham and Rainham, hadn't been shut, they wouldn't be so distant.

Do y'know R1Nut, I didn't always get on with my father terribly well....

But! He once had a hell of an argument with a Chief Constable whom he'd known from a boy at the same school. It was about the closure of our local village Police station/ house and the introduction of: "Panda cars" OR as it later became known: "Drive by Policing"

This was around 1960, ......... "Heartbeat" kinda' stuff! when the worst crime was someone trying to pinch your coal from your "coal hole"..

He was RIGHT! .. and do you know what? The mentality that did THAT is STILL here..... It always says: ...... "we Need to do things: cheaper!"

Never mind the quality feel the width........as the old TV programme used to say........eh?