The West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson has invited local people to serve their community by volunteering as new Custody Visitors.
Aimed at improving public confidence in Policing, custody visitors from the community can volunteer to ensure that detainees in Police custody are well-treated. For those with busy lifestyles with little time to spare, Custody Visiting offers an ideal and exciting opportunity to help serve their community. Over the last year, 100 local volunteers have spent over 373 hours in local Police stations talking to detainees and staff, ensuring that detainees are safe and looked after. The success of Custody Visiting in the West Midlands has led to David Jamieson calling for more volunteers to help serve their community.
The Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson is actively seeking highly motivated community spirited volunteers to spend as little of four hours every five weeks as Custody Visitors.
David Jamieson said “ensuring faith and integrity in our Police Officers is crucial to public confidence in the Police and Custody Visitors play a vital role in this challenge”.
After training, Custody Visitors will be expected to make unannounced visits to custody suites, make objective, unbiased judgements of how detainees are being treated, offering honest feedback to Police to improve detention facilities. Custody Visitors can make a difference and with improvements to accommodation a recent success, local volunteers can be positive guardians of fairness and justice within the Police.
Provided volunteers are over 18 years of age, applications are open for individuals to become Custody Visitors and play a vital role in serving the West Midlands community. No special qualifications are required and with a time commitment of as little at 4 hours every month, all applications are welcome.
The Commissioner, David Jamieson said “Custody visiting is very much an unsung community service which safeguards both the detainee and the police. It’s also a highly responsible and privileged role, in that very few members of the public have access to the custody environment”.
If you would like to find out more about how you can play your part and find our application form, please see the information page on our website or, read Emma and Harry’s personal stories of custody visiting.
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