The Royal Saint Helena Police Service, formerly the Saint Helena Police Service, is the local

police force The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...

for the British overseas territory of

Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha is a British Overseas Territory located in the South Atlantic and consisting of the island of Saint Helena, Ascension Island and the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha including Gough Island. Its name wa ...

, consisting of the

South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

islands of Saint Helena, Ascension and the island group of

Tristan da Cunha Tristan da Cunha (), colloquially Tristan, is a remote group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately from Cape Town in South Africa, from Saint Helena a ...

. The Royal Saint Helena Police Service is part of the Saint Helena Police Directorate which also includes the Fire and Rescue Service, His Majesty's Prison Jamestown, the Immigration Office and the Sea Rescue Service.

Staffing and resources

The service has 29 attested police officers: a chief of police, a detective chief inspector, three inspectors, a detective sergeant, four sergeants, three detective constables and sixteen constables. Including civilians, it has a total staff of 63 on the most populous island of St Helena, with a detachment of five on Ascension Island led by an inspector. Policing on

is undertaken by one full-time police inspector and three special constables. The current Tristan da Cunha inspector is Inspector

Conrad Glass Conrad Jack Glass (born 20 January 1961) is a Tristanian police inspector and civil servant who was Tristan da Cunha's former Chief Islander from 2007 to 2010. Glass is the first islander to have written a book about the island: ''Rockhopper ...

. Saint Helena has one police station, Coleman House, named after PC Leonard John Coleman who died in the line of duty on 2 December 1982. The Island's only prison - HMP Jamestown - was built in 1827 and in 2018.

Constables

Officers of the RSHPS are known as constables, as is typical with British police organisations. The constables are a mixture of UK, South African and local nationals. They do receive a certain amount of uniforms and equipment from the UK. In 2014, they received some uniform from Sussex Police in the United Kingdom.

Officer deaths on duty

*PC Leonard John Coleman was killed while attending a domestic incident on 2 December 1982.

HMP Jamestown

Established in 1826 HMP Jamestown provides accommodation for convicted and remanded prisoners and also provides a police custody facility for arrested persons. HMP Jamestown is a Category B prison holding adult male and female prisoners and young offenders, both convicted and those currently on remand by the courts. While prison services on St. Helena adhere to the same high standards as other facilities in the UK, HMP Jamestown cannot fulfill this requirements in some aspects, mainly due to the old building offering only limited space. It was criticised that the building did not offer modern (or hardly any at all) fire protection and is not barrier-free, making access for visiting wheelchair users impossible. The cells are overcrowded, not properly ventilated and do not allow sunlight to reach the inmates. There are no sanitation facilities in the cells and prisoners have to use common facilities that are not up to modern standards. These problems are well known as HMP Jamestown had been declared unfit for further use already in 1850. Since that time, many suggestions had been made to build a more suitable prison and relocate the old facility, the last plan was for doing so in 2017. However, none of these plans have been followed up properly and today the same facilities, that have been declared unsuitable in 1850, are still being used in an rather improvised way. Recent structural updates to improve the prisons fire safety might indicate that the relocation of the prison is still not planned in the near future. The prison was widely condemned and deemed to be ''"unfit for purpose"'' following an Inquiry by The Equality & Human Rights Commission.

Immigration office

This is the Office in charge of all border control at the Sea & Air Port, passport issuing and nationality matters and is composed of: *Chief Immigration Officer *Three Senior Immigration Officers *Four Immigration Officers

References

Sources

# World Police Encyclopedia, ed. by Dilip K. Das & Michael Palmiotto published by

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in England that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, Routledge, F1000 (publisher), F1000 Research or Dovepress. It is a division of Informa ...

, 2004. # World Encyclopedia of Police Forces and Correctional Systems, second edition, Gale, 2006. # Sullivan, Larry E. Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2005.

External links

Royal Saint Helena Police Service

Ascension Island Detachment
{{Africa topic, Law enforcement in Police forces of British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies Organisations based in Saint Helena Ascension Island Tristan da Cunha