A union leader has accused the Ministry of Justice of 'unjustly' targeting a single member of staff over the mistaken release of the Epping hotel sex attacker.
Mark Fairhurst, national chair of the Prison Officers' Association (POA), said one person - a discharging manager - had been suspended over the freeing of Hadush Kebatu despite at least two more senior figures also being involved.
Quite right, Mark? Can I assume they have a different union to the one your low-level drone belongs to?
The POA member who has been suspended was responsible for going through paperwork to ensure the right prisoners were being released under the right conditions. However, he was checking paperwork that had been processed by more senior colleagues.
Two of them, to be precise:
Fourteen days before a prisoner is released, a 'hub manager' in the offender unit looks at the paperwork to ensure the right inmate is being released under the right conditions. Twelve days later, a more senior manager - at governor level, checks the paperwork, the licence and the warrant to ensure the correct person is being set free.
And it seems this it not the only time their oversight has been found wanting. Far from it:
It is not the first time HMP Chelmsford has released an inmate by mistake, with the prison also conned into freeing a fraudster two years ago.
As usual in these articles, we go to the PM for a word, as if he doesn't have a record for tolerating utter howling incompetence in his subordinates:
Asked today when the sex offender would be removed from the country, the Prime Minister's official spokesperson said 'you have us on record from this morning that we expect that to happen imminently', and suggested that would be within a few days. He said prison release errors 'are never acceptable' and 'this is another symptom of the justice system crisis inherited by this Government having suffered cuts to staffing, failure to build prison places' and 'chronic underinvestment'.It comes as the chief inspector of prisons said mistakes over prisoner releases are happening 'all the time' and are symptomatic of the chaos within the system.
Oh, it's all the Tories' fault somehow. Who could see that one coming?
2 comments:
One of the offspring was recently made redundant (effectively due to new government policies - thanks a bunch, Reeves!) and is currently jobhunting.
If the vacancies advertised in his area are anything to go by, there is a dire shortage of prison officers, possibly not unconnected with the 2107 Lammy Review and its call to recruit more women and ethnic minority staff and ensure they are fast-tracked for promotion.
(Another post which has been around for a while and ‘welcomes applications from minority groups’ is ‘trainee train manager’, specifying the need to be available to work late and overnight shifts [my daughter-in-law vetoed that one even before the events of last weekend]. It strikes me that both of these areas are highly suited to the skills of ex-servicemen; I wonder how many former military personnel are currently being turned down in favour of someone who fits the DEI profiling.)
If one reads the recently published book 'Surviving the Slammer' by Alex Belfield, one quickly comes to the conclusion that neither the Prison Service, (nor the Probation Service), is fit for purpose. There are young, inexperienced and ill-trained warders who do not know the Prison Rules booklet. Mobile phones and drugs are smuggled in by the Warders (ask how many warders are sacked each year for these and sexual offences.) He had battles to be moved to a Cat C prison because of animosity of certain officers who took delight in withholding his 'rights'.
His conclusion is that the Prison Service is a 'box-ticking shambles.
Post a Comment