The ACT's chief police officer has flagged the introduction of new technology for the ageing City Watch House as the ACT Ombudsman submitted 21 suggestions on how to improve conditions in Canberra's largest underground cell block.
Commonwealth and ACT Ombudsman Iain Anderson lodged his post-visit summary to the 28-cell network under City Police Station at the same time as the territory's top cop outlined plans to introduce contact-free detainee-monitoring technology to supplement the existing CCTV system.
The Ombudsman had filed his report as part of the Commonwealth National Preventative Mechanism to monitor all places of detention under control of the Australian Federal Police, including the rarely-used cells across the five ACT police stations.
He found the Watch House - once an underground carpark - to be in "relatively good condition for its age" and "largely compliant" with the 1991 Recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
Most of the 21 "suggestions" for the Watch House related to relatively minor operational safety measures, such as more duress alarms, proper training for cell extractions, emergency battery lighting, counter screens and an appropriate staffing model.
The Watch House, like the rest of the heritage-listed City police station, was first opened in 1966 but was extensively refurbished and enlarged in 1995 to accommodate its maximum of 52 people. The two largest cells - described by some as the "drunk tanks" - can hold up to 20 people each.
The Watch House boasts more CCTV cameras than any police facility in the ACT. There are 99 cameras which cover all cells and corridors, the sallyport and the charge counter. There are two infrared day/night cameras in the padded cells.
But as the Ombudsman pointed out in his report: "There are many things that can go wrong with CCTV. CCTV is only as effective as the equipment installed and the person monitoring it."
That's largely why Deputy Commissioner Scott Lee, who took over from Neil Gaughan as the territory's chief police officer in March, is investigating the additional monitoring.
Given some people taken into the Watch House have mental health conditions, are heavily intoxicated, or affected by drugs, the duty of care required for these affected detainees can be onerous.
Large red duress alarms are located at strategic points around the facility but the Ombudsman urged police to consider issuing personal duress alarms to staff, "to alert others of an emergency such as a person in detention attempting self-harm, medical emergency, assaults etc".
Deputy Commissioner Lee said the technology he wanted was additional monitoring "to track the vital signs of a person".
"It's more than the CCTV cameras; it's non-intrusive technology where you place technology on someone coming into custody so their heart rate and vital signs are coming back to the monitoring centre in the Watch House," he said.
"We can get a much better understanding of a person's health and wellbeing and, where we need to, with our nurses and doctors who work with people in the Watch House, if we need to intervene earlier then we can."
The spectre of a death in custody is one which prevails across the developed world and one of the newest mechanisms to watch over detainee health in Lexington, Kentucky, is cell-imbedded ultra-wideband radar technology, flashing a warning to staff if vital signs go outside set parameters.
