Press Releases

Labour should deliver on its promise to introduce the “biggest wave of insourcing in a generation” by bringing prisons maintenance contracts back “in house”, says the union representing the UK’s 32,000 Prison Officers and Operational Support Staff. 

The Union representing the UK’s 35,000 prison officers has called for urgent action to address longstanding concerns of their members at HMP Durham. 

The Union representing the UK’s 35,000 Prison and Operational Support Grade Officers is calling for urgent action to address soaring levels of violence in jails in England and Wales. 

 

Prison Officers and those working in Operational Support Grades in England and Wales need an urgent pay rise to help address recruitment and retention problems across the prison estate.

Union says Winchester is a damning example of the crisis in the Prison Service

 

In a blistering evidence session to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee Mark Fairhurst, National Chair of the Prison Officers Association told the committee that a major crisis in recruitment and retention is destabilising prisons and endangering staff and prisoners. 

“This is a shocking report that exposes widespread organised criminal activity, serious violence and rampant drugs misuse as commonplace in this Prison.

 

“This Inspection Report is further evidence of the crisis in the UK’s prisons. The use of drones to deliver drugs and phones into the jail, low morale amongst staff, rising levels of violence, poor and unsanitary conditions and high levels of sickness absence were all identified by inspectors who visited Long Lartin.”

 

The Chair of the trade union that represents the UK’s 32,000 Prison Officers told MPs of the intolerable pressures faced by staff working in the country’s prisons and the impact it is having on prisoner rehabilitation. 

Prison Officers Association Chair Mark Fairhurst will give evidence to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee inquiry into Prison Culture: Governance, Leadership and Staffing.

Representing over 30,000 Prison, Correctional and Secure Psychiatric Workers, the POA is the largest UK Union in this sector, able to trace its roots back more than 100 years.