The PACE safeguards that protect a detained suspect — from notification and legal advice to detention time limits — and what happens at trial when the police fall short.
Everything that later happens at trial — the admissibility of a confession, the drawing of an adverse inference — can turn on what was done in the custody suite. This chapter opens with the statutory framework, the custody officer's role and the continuing rights a suspect must be told about, before examining two of those rights in detail: having someone informed of the arrest and access to legal advice, including when each can be delayed and how the solicitor operates in interview. It then covers the caution and the circumstances in which silence can count against a suspect, the detention clock with its extensions and periodic reviews, and the welfare rules protecting all detainees — with particular safeguards for juveniles, vulnerable adults and the taking of samples. It closes with the consequences of breach, where sections 76 and 78 of PACE give the courts power to exclude the evidence the police have gathered.
