Custody visiting has been neglected in the study of criminal justice, and very few members of the general public have ever heard of it. Custody visitors enter one of the state's secret places, with a mandate to make certain limited checks. What are they doing, who is it for and why? To find the answers to these questions, I conducted desk research; an analysis of the history of the scheme; a detailed case study of a local scheme; archival research into the distinctive Lambeth lay visitors scheme; and interviews with Michael Meacher and Jane Warwick. This has enabled findings to be made about the key issues of state policy, visitors’ attitudes and the effectiveness of their work. This chapter summarises my findings, looks at the scope for further research, and discusses whether, and if so how, the current system could be rebuilt to provide effective regulation, identifying the radical changes that would be necessary. The chapter concludes by explaining how, politically, those reforms could be achieved.

The key issues

Chapter Three showed that the visitors were not independent, and that their attitudes were generally aligned to those of the Police and Crime Commissioner and the police. Chapter Four showed that the work of custody visiting was ineffective, in that it did not fulfil any of its various purposes, at least not to a degree discernible by the current study. Both of these outcomes are likely to have resulted, at least in part, from official policy as described in Chapter Two, which has neutered custody visiting over the last 35 years. The essential step towards reaching these conclusions has been establishing the need for independent scrutiny and regulation of police behaviour in custody blocks. Detention before charge is a pivotal part of the criminal justice system, yet the presumption of innocence, which is thought to be one of its key features, does not apply, and the power of the police is paramount. Power is the single most important concept identified in this research. The power of the police operates on all those who visit their territory – the custody block – including the custody visitors. It is an example of Lukes’ three-dimensional power, operating to influence people's behaviour, often through the means of socialisation, without any exercise of that power, and without there being any overt conflict.