ALL CHANGE ALL CHANGE

As I reflect on yet another crisis-ridden year for the Prison Service, I must show my appreciation for the dedicated and relentless work that the NEC, full-time officials, support staff and all POA employees have done to help POA members and myself. I cannot recall a busier year, and even now, as the year draws to a close, I find myself inundated with work that simply cannot be put on hold just because we enter the festive season. The privilege the NEC has of taking annual leave when they choose, much of it over Christmas and new year because the people we deal with will be off, will certainly not be a restful period. I know I will be spending my time catching up on work and ensuring our members are fully supported. I guess we all accept it as part of our role, but it is a facet of NEC life that goes unnoticed. Rest assured, if POA members need me, I will be there for them.

Without doubt, we have witnessed an incident-ridden year in which our prisons came close to collapse because of a capacity crisis that, at one point, had us offering less than 100 spaces within the adult closed male estate. This led to emergency measures, including early releases at the 40% point of sentence, an extension to the HDC scheme and temporary measures to allocate clearly unsuitable prisoners into the open estate to free up much-needed space within the closed. The knock-on effect saw the open estate destabilised and the probation service unable to cope. As I draft these jottings, we are locking up more prisoners than when the government came into power, and as the Chief Inspector of Probation confirmed to me, for every four prisoners we are releasing early, three come back. So much for a successful initiative!

The sentencing review will see most prisoners serve just a third of their sentence in prison once the legislation is passed next spring, such is the concern about future prison capacity. I don’t know about you, but I doubt justice will be served to victims of crime when their burglar serves just one year of a three-year sentence. What a truly diabolical situation we find ourselves in.

On the back of a capacity crisis, we have witnessed record levels of assaults against staff, with the viciousness and ferocity of those attacks now surpassing what we have ever witnessed in the past. By the time you read this, the review into Separation Centres, conducted by Jonathon Hall, should have been published. Let us hope the recommendations increase security and safety for staff while robustly managing those whose only desire is to kill us.

We have seen both of the leaders within HMPPS step away. First, Amy Rees moved on to pastures new once the new permanent secretary was announced, swiftly followed by Phil Copple, who announced his retirement next March, once the new CEO was announced. I wish them both all the best for the future. It seems even at the top of the organisation there are stitch-ups; what hope is there for the rest of us?

Our new CEO, James McEwan, openly admits that he has zero operational experience of prisons, but confirmed to me during our introductory meeting that he intends to surround himself with people with plenty of experience. I welcomed the meeting and look forward to working constructively with our new CEO to build a service for which we can all once again be proud to work. To make that happen, there must be a change of culture from senior leaders within the service, and the voice of the front line, via the POA, must be listened to and acted upon. We refuse to allow the mismanagement and vindictiveness displayed by some prison governors to go unchallenged, and I fully expect our new chief to address the issues we highlight and not look away hoping everything will be OK. Leaders need to lead.

It would not have escaped your attention that we had yet another major headline after the mistaken release of a high profile sex offender from HMP Chelmsford. There swiftly followed a raft of political statements that where both unjust and unnecessary, as was the suspension of a POA member. To single out one person when there are several others involved in the entire process is diabolical. If the paperwork tells you to release a prisoner and it has been signed by your superiors, then you do your job and release them. The POA correctly refused media requests once the news was broken, despite immense pressure to accept interviews. Our main priority is protecting our members and dealing with facts. I did not accept any interviews until we had been briefed by the local committee and affected members. I believe this was the right thing to do and I hope you do too.

Our members will always come first. Let us hope that after this latest incident our procedures are strengthened and we never experience this again. Resources, staff training and adequate systems in place should ensure we are watertight. I hope the conclusions reached do not mean somebody loses their job. This has been happening consistently for years, so we need to learn from it and have fit-for-purpose procedures in place, not condemn people for something that could have happened to any one of us. Why didn’t our leaders remedy it when it first started to occur? They had at least 261 other opportunities.

As a union, we continue to succeed. We have brokered pay rises that have surpassed inflation, secured body armour for staff working within high-risk areas, and have finally got the government to issue PAVA within the YCS estate. Our private sector colleagues continue to enjoy improvements to their terms and conditions, including pay, and our membership continues to grow. As we look forward to a new year, we will continue to address the major issues that affect us all, including negotiating a lower retirement age, increasing pay, rolling out PAVA in the open and female estate, and ensuring body armour is more widely available across all other aspects of the estate. In our secure hospitals, we now have a seat at the table to improve our members lives and we will always be guided by the membership when dealing with the many employers the membership has.

At this time of year, we must reflect and remember those family members, POA colleagues and close friends we have sadly lost. That pain never goes away, but if we seek support when we need it and keep talking to each other, we can get through those bad times and come out stronger. In these times of increasing trauma and PTSD, it is important that we ask for help if we need it. The POA offers a range of support services if anybody needs them; just visit our website for details.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the work you perform on the front line, and for the support you give me and the NEC, and, of course, wish you all a restful, peaceful and very merry Christmas and new year.

Until next time, take care and all the best. l

MARK FAIRHURST
NATIONAL CHAIR