ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how the police seek to create and control the environment which makes it possible for them to produce 'cases' in the manner of their own choosing. The police were able, therefore, to shut out legal advisers from the police station, as they had done in the Maxwell Confait, Guildford and Birmingham cases. The decision to detain an individual at the police station should be an individual decision, specific to the circumstances of the case before the custody officer. The degree of control which police have over the construction of reality and over the legal and procedural rules which empower them, then, is absolutely basic to the functioning of police and their ability to create case files. Control over the case-building environment is secured by creating a set of conditions which define the relationship of a citizen as suspect to the police.
