Video 2
What do Independent Custody Visitors think about the ICV Scheme (part 2)
I think it really does benefit the public and the Police force, in real terms, when you've got independent sort of people going out there and sort of monitoring the police cells and I think its a very good idea for the police force and the community as a whole. And I feel that different sort of skills from different people is very useful to the role of custody visitor and I feel different age groups is an important factor. We've had people from different backgrounds which is very interesting and very sort of helpful to the community. And my personal thing is that I feel its very important for anybody to actually play a roll and give something back to the community, which is more important than anything else. I mean we do have to make a living but on top of that if we all sort of gave back something to the community it does really help and it helps yourself and it's the satisfaction that you get. I personally get a lot of satisfaction actually doing community work.
Video 1
What do Independent Custody Visitors think about the ICV Scheme (part 1)
A good ICV visitor (independent custody visitors) I
think has to be a good listener, because you're picking up on what the detained
person is saying, what the custody sergeant is saying. You need to pull all of
this information together. You need to be quite thorough because occasionally
you'll have a detained person who will give you some information which
afterwards you need to check, so you can look at the custody record or certain
parts of it. For example if a detainee says 'oh I haven't had anything to eat' -
well that may be true, but the reality is they might have been offered food and
refused it. So you do need to be able to pull things together.
You need to be impartial because occasionally you do have to challenge what has
happened and question the records or the treatment of a detainee and so I think
that you need to quite a strong personality. You certainly can't back off,
because the aim of what you're doing is to be impartial, is to be the sort of
person that can make judgements about the situation given the evidence.
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