THE Prison Officers Association (POA) have condemned a government scheme to form a reserve force for England and Wales to help it respond to a rise in inmate numbers or ‘operational pressures’.
‘We’re appalled by the Prison Service doing this,’ POA general secretary Steve Gillan told News Line yesterday.
The ‘initiative’ was described by the Ministry of Justice as the HM Prison Service Reserve, in a letter sent to ex-prison officers to gauge their interest.
Those who sign up could be called in on short-term contracts from August that have been described as ‘more like zero-hours contracts’.
Gillan added: ‘Quite frankly we made representations when there were 3,000 people made redundant in the past two years.
‘We warned they were letting too many experienced staff go. And when they shut 16 prisons we told them they were closing too many at one time.
‘What the government is setting up is like a bank of staff, as they have in the NHS. This crisis measure is created by government mismanagement and prison service managers.
‘All this is to appease ministers over cuts. We warned overcrowding has led to increased tensions in our prisons. And if it’s a long hot summer there could be further incidents, perhaps riots.’
The MoJ explained in the letter the move would help it respond to short-term demands, such as a rise in inmate numbers or ‘operational pressures’.
The jail population stands at 85,410 and has been growing faster than expected.
One former prison officer said the terms of one of the offers was ‘almost a zero-hours contract’ and there were concerns workers would have to return some of their lump sum payment from the voluntary redundancy scheme, VEDS, or their pension before they could take up the employment.
The letter acknowledges any ex-officer who joins the reserve may find it has an impact on their pension. A number of ex-officers have already rejected the offer.
Forty prisons in England and Wales have been told to raise their ‘operational capacity’ at a time when most prisons are running at full capacity or are overcrowded.
It follows the closure of 16 prisons in the past four years, with a number of them closed at short notice.
