Know The Danger Dangerous House 8 Assaults a day St, Violent Town United Kingdom 24th July 2013 To the Rt Honorable (your MP’s name) Re: Prison Staff in the United Kingdom working in Public or private prisons. For many years now, you, your predecessors and any government in power has failed to recognize the difficult & dangerous job we as Prison Officers do on behalf of the general public, choosing only to pay “lip service” and forward standardized letters produced for you on behalf of senior staff working within the prison estate. You Fail to recognize us in the same capacity as Police, Firefighters & nursing staff, although we have to conduct all of these professions and more in our daily role and deserve the title of “front line staffing”, we are perceived by the general public as corrupt brutes who run prisons like gang warlords and neither our senior management or indeed government attempt to paint us in any different light. Most likely as this serves a purpose to subdue any positive media attention that would empower us to be listened to in any forum. We truly are a forgotten service. Most of us decided upon a career in public service as it was a job for life, or so we thought, but also because we wanted to do some good for the general population, for the future of our children and to live in a safe decent and secure society. To work as a Prison Officer is not a simple career choice, it involves giving up your entire life to the job, alienating your family and friends, changing the way you live and accepting that your health and lifestyle will suffer great detriment in the process. This however is not clear when you sign on the dotted line and only becomes apparent over many years of service or after the worst has happened. Talk to any member of staff and none will approve of corrupt prison staff in any form, but what are you doing to protect the more vulnerable amongst us? Nothing is the answer, within the public prison service you have reduced starting pay and failed to give any decent pay awards for many years; in the private sector it is even worse. You reduce our numbers so we are isolated among the most skilled conditioners of the human mind and worst of all the training to deal with this behavior and availability of support when suffering at the hands of this is virtually non-existent. Violence is soaring within our closed society with the POA reporting 8 assaults against staff daily, times that by almost 10 for prisoners. However being Prison Officers allows us to observe now many times the reporting procedure is not followed and how often staff are discouraged from reporting assaults, we all know this figure is woefully off the mark and far from the truth. What are the government doing about Prisons being institutions of crime? Again nothing, reforms of the service are reducing the staff to control these tiny populations of the most unsavory characters society has to offer, with all hope of successful rehabilitation being profit driven through “payments by results” & sourcing the rehabilitation process to private contractors offering services that appear to have the answers!!! Prisons have been described as a “failed experiment” and not fit for purpose in this modern society and they are right we are not, but this is not due to the staff working in them it’s due to government policy hell bent on taking a corporate approach and reducing unit costs. The only message this gives is that prisoners will be contained as cheaply as possible. The general public have right to believe prisons are strict controlled institutions, giving prisoners a second chance upon release but also keeping them safe from those that pose the greatest risk. They deserve a service where staff are fully in control and where prisoners see their time served as a punishment for which it was intended to be, and wouldn’t want to return to under any circumstances. Ask any prison officer if they truly believe this is the case and they will most likely say we survive by the goodwill of prisoners and management appease them to keep a lid on the tension beneath the surface. I do not know you personally but from my understanding to become an MP you need to have a high moral standing and I would hope what led you to politics was a desire to do good for your constituents, society and the United Kingdom as a whole, this purpose is not too dissimilar to how a prison officer feels when being able to do their job correctly. Please remember this whenever you vote or make decisions that affect us and how we do our job, we need your support not your dislike for us. To sum up, prison staff want to do a good job and serve by rehabilitating offenders, but were no longer empowered to do so and just crisis manage from one incident to the next, we want to feel safe but we are only provided with nonsense policies such as “Zero Tolerance” that sound great but in theory but mean absolutely nothing, we want to feel supported but are increasing feeling like he enemy. Invest in frontline prison staff, empower us to do our jobs without the constant attention of managers and promote us in the professional manner we deserve and we WILL be able to give you, society and our children the safe, decent and secure world we all want to live in as best as possible.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 13:43:04 +0000
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