Commentary on Sections
Part 3: Detention officers
218.This Part covers powers that would be exercised by detention officers at police stations. Many of them are connected to the handling of persons in custody – an area of work in which police support staff are increasingly involved – such as powers to search detained persons, to take fingerprints and certain samples without consent and to take photographs. Providing police support staff with these and other powers will broaden the scope of the work they can undertake and ensure their work is underpinned by the law.
219.Paragraph 25 enables a suitably designated detention officer to require certain defined categories of persons who have been convicted, cautioned, reprimanded or warned in relation to recordable offences to attend a police station to have their fingerprints taken. Recordable offences are set out in regulations made under section 27 of PACE: the National Police Records (Recordable Offences) Regulations 2000, which include offences carrying a sentence of imprisonment on conviction.
220.Paragraph 26 enables a designated detention officer to carry out non-intimate searches of persons detained at police stations or elsewhere and to seize items found during such searches. Restrictions on the scope of searching and seizure and on the circumstances in which searches can be carried out are applied to designated persons in the same way as to constables.
221.Paragraph 27 enables a designated detention officer to carry out searches and examinations in order to determine the identity of persons detained at police stations. Identifying marks found during such processes may be photographed. This makes subsection (6)(b) of section 54A of PACE (under which this power may be exercised by persons designated for the purpose by a chief officer of police) unnecessary. In consequence, section 54A(6) is amended by paragraph 9(2) of Schedule 7.
222.Paragraph 28 enables a designated detention officer to carry out intimate searches in the same very limited circumstances that are applicable to constables. An intimate search is a search that consists of the physical examination of a person’s body orifices other than the mouth.
223.Paragraph 29 enables a designated detention officer to take fingerprints without consent in the same circumstances that a constable can. They can also discharge the duty to inform the person concerned that his fingerprints may be the subject of a speculative search against existing records.
224.Paragraph 30 enables a designated detention officer to discharge the duty to inform a person from whom an intimate sample has been taken that the sample may be the subject of a speculative search against existing records.
225.Paragraph 31 enables a designated detention officer to take non-intimate samples without consent and to inform the person from whom the sample is to be taken of any necessary authorisation by a senior officer and of the grounds for that authorisation. The designated person may also inform the person concerned that a non-intimate sample may be the subject of a speculative search against existing records.
226.Paragraph 32 enables a designated detention officer to require certain defined categories of persons who have been charged with or convicted of recordable offences to attend a police station to have a sample taken.
227.Paragraph 33 enables a designated detention officer to photograph detained persons in the same way that constables can. This makes subsection (3)(b) of section 64A of PACE (under which this power may be exercised by persons designated for the purpose by a chief officer of police) unnecessary. In consequence, section 64A(3) is amended by paragraph 9(5) of Schedule 7.
