National Preventive Mechanism Third Annual Report 2011–12 Professional knowledge Article 18(2) of OPCAT requires that, ‘the experts of the national preventive mechanism have the required capabilities and professional knowledge’. The SPT has expanded on this provision, suggesting that NPMs should include staff with relevant legal and health care expertise.25 This requirement is at odds with the nature of lay bodies. Lay monitors are selected on the basis of their qualities and skills rather than any professional background or qualification. Often, those with work experience of a particular type of custody are specifically prohibited from becoming a lay monitor, as this would represent a conflict of interest (for example, a serving or former police officer may not serve as a custody visitor). Once appointed, they receive training in detention monitoring. A key strength of lay bodies is that they are made up of people who represent the local community and come from all walks of life, thereby providing a range of perspectives when monitoring treatment and conditions for detainees. The lay members of the NPM do not feel that they should change their composition in response to OPCAT as, due to the layered nature of detention monitoring, professional expertise (such as health care expertise) is provided by the inspectorates during their visits to places of detention. Diversity Article 18(2) of OPCAT also requires that NPMs have a gender balance and an adequate representation of ethnic and minority groups. IMB members and custody visitors are recruited in an open and fair manner. Given that they are recruited from a range of backgrounds and not on the basis of their professional expertise, coupled with the sheer number of lay monitors (there are around 1,750 IMB 25 SPT, Guidelines paragraph 20. 38 members in England and Wales), there is scope for a broad cross-section of the community to be involved in detention monitoring. However, because of the voluntary nature of the work, lay monitors tend to be retired and therefore older. Lay bodies can struggle to recruit younger volunteers, as well as those from minority ethnic groups. Lay bodies acknowledge that this issue must be addressed given that younger people and those from black and minority ethnic groups are over-represented in the detainee population. The workshop gave the lay members of the NPM the opportunity to share information about how they target minority groups in recruitment and what can be done to retain volunteers. Adequate resources Despite the many advantages of lay monitoring, there are also some challenges. Although it is a cost-effective method of monitoring detainees’ treatment and conditions, even lay monitoring has faced budget cuts in recent years. To maintain monitoring levels, savings must be found in already lean budgets. There are concerns that training for volunteers may be affected. Given that it can be difficult to ensure consistency in approach across monitoring boards or custody visiting schemes, initial and ongoing training remains essential. Custody visiting in Scotland In England and Wales, and in Northern Ireland, police custody visiting schemes were established by statute. Although custody visiting schemes also operate in Scotland, they had no statutory basis and, as a result, were not designated as a member of the NPM by the government. At the time of designation in 2009, the government required all NPM members to have a statutory right of unrestricted access to places of detention and to detainees. However, since then the status