MJS esrel2019-paper.pdf (233.42 kB)
Investigating the decision-making approach to risk assessment in police custody
conference contribution
posted on 2019-06-04, 09:00 authored by Melanie-Jane Stoneman, Lisa JacksonLisa Jackson, Sarah DunnettSarah Dunnett, Louise CookeWhen a person is booked into police custody in England and Wales they are assessed for risk of harm to
themselves or to others. This risk assessment informs the decision as to what observation level they are placed on,
ranging from hourly visits to constant observation for the highest risk detainees. In comparison to the international
standard for risk management, there are gaps in the risk assessment process in police custody. Currently, the
analysis and evaluation of identified risk is down to the experience and judgement of the Custody Officer, rather
than a more structured method. This paper questions whether the process should be more formalized, using a
statistical tool rather than relying on expert judgement. This paper uses a mixed methods approach investigating
custody record data from three English police forces to identify key risk factors that lead to variances in
observation levels, and interviewing sixteen Custody Officers from a further two forces investigating their
perspective of the risk assessment process The findings suggest that whilst there are key factors affecting
observation level, an entirely statistically based risk assessment process would lack the flexibility to account for
the individual and would need to include additional information custody officers consider. It is concluded that
further investigation should be conducted into a process which combines an actuarial approach with the intuitive
insights gained from expert decision-making.
Funding
This work was supported by the EPSRC under Grant EP/M507908/1
History
School
- Business and Economics
Department
- Business
Published in
Proceedings of the 29th European Safety and Reliability ConferencePages
1594 - 1601Citation
STONEMAN, M-J. ... et al., 2019. Investigating the decision-making approach to risk assessment in police custody. IN: Beer, M. and Zio, E. (eds). Proceedings of the 29th European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL), Hannover, Germany, 22 - 26 September 2019.Publisher
© ESREL Organisers. Published by Research Publishing, SingaporeVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2019-05-15Publication date
2019Copyright date
2019ISBN
9789811127243Publisher version
Language
- en