GOING to court or to jail is not something many people will want to experience, but that is exactly what North Yorkshire's assistant chief constable will be encouraging people to do if they visit Ripon this summer.

The city's Prison and Police Museum and Courthouse Museum both open new exhibitions tomorrow - and Peter Bagshaw has been drafted in to help.

He will be at the former House of Correction, in St Marygate, at 11am, to open displays which tell the story of fingerprinting, introduced at New Scotland Yard exactly a century ago.

Then he will go to the former courthouse in Minster Road, which will be offering tourists a glimpse behind the scenes of TV's popular Heartbeat series, which uses the building for filming when any of its characters are up before the beak.

Organisers emphasise the figures on show when film crews are absent are no reflection on the standard of acting in the show.

The cardboard cut-outs are merely illustrative, giving visitors an impression of the daily dramas which used to be played out before the Bench before the building closed as a seat of justice in 1998.