Quantcast
Channel: Secretary of State – The Criminal Justice Blog
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 12

IMB Soap Opera

0
0

Is the IMB like liquid soap?

Not the wonderful clear stuff which has a beautiful fragrance and an antibacterial effect on everything it touches.

No, not that.

More like that gawd awful stuff you find in greasy dispensers at motorway service station toilets, where hygiene means tick boxing inspection sheets on the back of the door. Its colour an insipid artificial pink like slime from old boiled sweets left too long in the sun, and its smell nauseous like cat sick.

But it is its opacity that irks me.

Designed to deliberately obfuscate, smother and shroud all that has any proximity to it, you never truly know whether it has any cleansing properties at all.

I neither like nor trust opaque liquid soap.

I happily tolerate the clear stuff, so long as it really is clear and totally free of nasty microbeads, creaming additives and fake foam.

It would have been far better for the IMB if it had been a bar of soap. At least you know where you are with a bar of soap. Visible, tangible, relatable, practical, and likeable. A bar of soap has these and many other qualities about it which reassures me of its fitness for purpose.

From the moment it is unwrapped and placed at the side of the sink, its very presence reassures you. Sitting there unblemished and ready to serve, a fresh bar of soap exudes a sense of personalised attentiveness and an unwillingness to be corrupted by falling into the wrong person’s hands.

I don’t think it is too much to ask that a bar of soap is fresh and that I am the first person to use it. There are some things that are unacceptable to pass around.

Even if we were to believe all they tell us then, at best, IMB would resemble a remnant of used soap, cracked and old. Once so full of purpose, now degraded in the hands of multiple ministers and permanent secretaries. Put on the side, its usefulness expended but its stubborn existence more a token gesture of monitoring rather than an effective part of the hygiene of the justice system.

It is an exhausted specimen of uselessness despite what its National Chair, Secretariat, Management Board would have you believe. They justify their own sense of importance with the sort of job roles that place them on a pedestal. But in reality it all just smacks of self aggrandizement; as they say in Texas – “Big hat, no cattle.”

Where once I bought into this whole parade, now I see it for the parody that it is. Where once I was pleased to serve, now I call out the servitude that the system enforces on those who work within it.

Where once I would write the annual reports, now I challenge the pointlessness of recording observations and making recommendations, an utterly futile exercise because there was never any intention by the Ministry of Justice to do anything about them.

A fresh bar of soap has an impressive versatility about it. It can give you clean hands, yes, but it can go a lot further than that. It can be carved, shaped and fashioned into an object of extraordinary beauty.

Some people serving their time in prison surprise me when they produce such intricate objects crafted from something as humble as a fresh bar of soap; an allegory of their own lives, in some cases I have known. Arguably a work of art to be admired and cherished.

Whereas an old, cracked bar of soap has no such versatility or value, and does not merit being kept.

If you can’t wash your hands with it, you should wash your hands of it.

In its present form, the IMB needs to be replaced.

~


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 12

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images