Home Office Prisoners: Recommendations for Healthcare Professionals

Operation Safeguard is a plan to deal with prison overcrowding in the United Kingdom; it involves using cells at police stations as accommodation for prisoners when the number of cells in prisons becomes critically low.

It operates under the Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act 1980 which allows prisoners remanded or sentenced to prison by the courts to be held in police cells. Under the current proposed protocols for Operation Safeguard, those detained in police custody will not have previously been received into prison custody.

Updated February 2023