Inside every prison there is an Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), which is made up from members of the public, from all walks of life, who monitor the day-to-day life in their local prison to ensure that proper standards of care and decency are maintained.

IMB members are independent, unpaid and work three days per month and are not influenced by the prison establishment.
HMP Guys Marsh in Shaftesbury is appealing for open minded and clear thinking people to join its IMB team of nine.

The HMP Guys Marsh community is ‘home’ to 430 men and a workplace for more than 200 local people. It is a Category C Adult male prison with a capacity of 466 men, but this is likely to be expanded over the next few years. Category C prisons house those offenders considered unlikely to pose a risk to the general public.

Rob Norton, IMB Guys Marsh chairman, said: “It is rarely spoken about and hardly celebrated, which given its growing strengths as noted by the Prison Inspectorate in their latest report, is a shame. The word ‘prison’ tends to bring out some very different responses in people. Whatever you feel about the purpose of prisons, most people would agree that they ought to be institutions which are safe and where the occupants are treated in a decent way.”

“Prison life, despite all the myths, is not much fun. Most men at Guys Marsh deal with their incarceration in a pragmatic way; the crime is committed, the consequences of it need to be dealt with, and then move on. However, some find it much harder to cope with loss of family, friends and freedom. In normal times, prisons are busy places during the day. Guys Marsh being a training and resettlement prison, has workshops, farm and garden teams, kitchens and education courses, for trades and literacy/numeracy, all providing valuable experience and preparation for release.”

“Sadly, at the moment, all this activity is in abeyance, but we all look forward to happier future days. During an earlier lockdown, a team of prisoners were charged with the production of ‘scrubs’ for PPE.”

The IMB is a voluntary organisation appointed by the Ministry of Justice, to provide an overview to ensure that prisons are safe and run in a humane way. All prisons have an appointed board made up from members of the local community.

The role is entirely voluntary, but it is one way of ensuring that what goes on in prisons is visible to the general public. The board has no role in There’s a placemanaging prisons, but members have a right to go into all areas of the prison and observe what is going on. Prisoners who feel that the prison service has acted unreasonably can appeal to the IMB to intervene on their behalf. The board publishes a report annually to the Minister of Justice and is made public for all to read.

Rob added: “Might you be interested? The commitment would be no more than three days a month at a time to suit you. We would welcome applications from all those who are interested.”

Applications are available at imb.org.uk/join-now/current-vacancies/

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