Ha! A couple of bites!
I had a tour of the facilities at Nottingham CC a couple of months ago, as a civvy not a 'customer' I hasten to add, and one of the meatbox vans was outside if anyone fancied a look. I'm really quite sorry that I did.
In the back there is a central corridor and three tiny cell boxes on each side. Inside the cell box is truly terrible. You know those roadside/onsite khazi boxes? Well, each cell is about half that size, all furnished in plushest indestructible sluice-down rock-hard plastic, the seat of which is moulded in the same panel as the whole back wall, and there is just about enough room to get through the 3"-thick door into the box and to almost sit down. You can't sit properly because there is not enough room for your knees, which are forced against the indestructible plastic of the front wall. It stinks of disinfectant, and once interred you have no seat belts (you could presumably harm yourself with them so they are simply not provided). There is a small blast-proof blackened out window to the outside and the same into the central corridor. Once in, the locks are disabled so even if someone got in and overpowered the guard, you could not be freed from the cell. There are no toilet facilities at all, which is presumably why everything in there is hose-able.
And there is a tiny hatch in the roof so that if the van is involved in a pile up and the doors are rendered useless, these can be released electronically by the front cab occupants and you can be helped out by rescuers. Larger people would simply have to wait in there until the van was righted and it was possible to get to them by more conventional means.
Lovely! Can you imagine a journey of several hours from CC to prison in an environment like that?
The thought of that alone would put me off crime, never mind the possibility of a stretch..
Sorry for the hijack, btw...
