Latest news with #prisonofficers
Times
3 days ago
- Times
Prison officers to use Tasers on violent inmates as assaults soar
A prisoner lies on the floor in the gym as three inmates batter him with pickaxe handles, threatening to kill him. Seconds later, the three attackers are sprawled motionless, having been shot with 1,500 volts of electricity from Tasers fired by eight specialist prison officers. Luckily for the four 'prisoners', they are not actually in custody, They are among the elite unit of prison officers taking part in role play during their final training sessions before being sent to prisons across England and Wales, equipped with Tasers. From Monday, prisoners who misbehave face being tasered after Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, authorised the use of the devices in prisons for the first time in an attempt to combat spiralling violence in Britain's overcrowded prisons. Highly trained specialist officers from the operational response and resilience unit (ORRU) will be equipped with the T7 model, which can hit targets 24 feet away. The weapons are powered with 50,000 volts, although they do so at about two milliamps, which mean they hit with a force of 1,500 volts of electricity.
News.com.au
4 days ago
- News.com.au
Shocking new claims about lockdowns, suicide attempts and ‘green water' at Melbourne prison
Ashleigh Chapman is pacing back and forth inside her tiny cell in the solitary confinement division at Melbourne's maximum security women's prison. She is almost six feet tall and her long legs take seven steps to reach the concrete wall on one side before she turns 180 degrees and paces back towards the other wall. The monotony of daily life in 'the slot' at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre is not her only problem. The water for showering, brushing her teeth and filling her water bottle are turning the sink and the shower floor green. When she boils it inside the glass kettle inside her cell, the walls of the kettle turn black, she says. 'You couldn't see inside the kettle at all,' Chapman tells Her weight has dropped from 80kg to 50kg behind bars, because something is 'making me sick'. She skips meals routinely when prison officers ignore her allergies and serve her food that could cause anaphylactic shock. Cereal for dinner, or nothing at all, is a regular theme. She listens out for the jangling of keys. It's part of what she refers to as the 'psychological torment and torture' that comes with being locked inside her cell for 23 hours a day — or 24 if she gets unlucky. Her tiny, daily taste of freedom comes in the form of a 20-minute visit to the airing yard or a trip to the empty loungeroom void of a single other human being and where the TV remote is broken. Chapman, who left the facility in Melbourne's north in May after four years behind bars, says there were numerous days where she spent 24 hours in her cell. On other days, she would be let out only to be told immediately to re-enter her cell. 'They literally unlocked my door. As soon as I stepped out they said, 'sorry, we need to lock you back in'. I said, 'why?' and they said, 'doesn't matter, go back in'.' Chapman speaks almost daily with three inmates still inside. She says they are 'constantly reporting' lockdowns that mean inmates are having their basic human rights taken away. It's leading to huge numbers of self-harm incidents and suicide attempts, she says. A 'code black', which is a medical event, happens 'nearly every day'. 'Whether or not that would be almost passing away, self harm is rampant,' Chapman says. 'The amount of times that medical would be called for a code black is unbelievable.' 'She did it quietly in her cell' Kelly Flanagan left the prison in March this year after spending two years in the Murray Unit — which is not for inmates in solitary confinement. In diary notes shared with she reveals that lockdowns — usually reserved for riots or security breaches — have been occuring almost daily because of staff shortages. The result — seven suicide attempts in a single month. 'Just before I got out, the women at DPFC including me were being locked down as much as 60 per cent of the time,' Flanagan says. 'In the last month that I was in prison there were seven women who tried to commit suicide. Five of those were Indigenous women. Two near fatal attempts. The community does not know how bad it is there at the moment.' Her diary notes show that in February this year there were lockdowns on February 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24 and 27. Flanagan has compiled a spreadsheet of every lockdown at DPFC between January 2024 and May 2025. The data has come from prisoners, lawyers and other prison sources, she says. It shows the Gordon Unit, where Chapman was in solitary confinement, had 14 all day lockdowns between March and May this year. The reason for those lockdowns was 'no staff'. 'On March 13, I was living two cells down from a woman who tried to kill herself,' Flanagan tells 'This particular woman couldn't handle the lockdowns anymore. She expressed this to us and the officers on many occasions. She voiced it every day. 'She really couldn't handle being alone anymore. She tried to end her life by cutting her wrist and letting herself bleed out. She did it quietly in her cell, door shut and nobody knew anything. 'She almost passed away by the time we found her. My heart is breaking for her. I want to cry for her. No one should ever feel this isolated.' Victoria's Corrections Minister Enver Erdogan addressed the concerns around lockdowns during Question Time on May 28. 'This issue has been going on for a number of months now, I must admit that as minister I have been quite frustrated, too, understanding that staff there are very passionate about making a difference,' he said. 'Lockdowns are sometimes required in our prison system. It is necessary to maintain the safety and security of prisoner and staff. We do expect them to be kept to a minimum.' has reached out to the Department of Corrections for comment. A spokesperson said: 'We take the safety of staff and prisoners very seriously in our corrections system.' 'During a lockdown prisoners continue to have access to meals, healthcare, rehabilitation programs and legal services. 'We are continuing to recruit hundreds of new corrections staff, with a squad of new recruits starting training at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in this month and due to graduate in September.' Corrections claims there have been no reports of green water coming from any taps at DPFC. 'Overcrowded, understaffed and unsafe' Shadow Corrections Minister David Southwick told Victoria's prisons are 'now in chaos and are overcrowded, understaffed, and unsafe'. 'Locking up women in their cells for days on end not because they've done anything wrong, but because the system can't find enough staff is unacceptable, unsafe, and no way to run a prison,' he said. 'This is not new. I raised serious concerns earlier this year, and since then I've continued to hear disturbing stories from inside Dame Phyllis Frost Centre; women missing medical care, family visits cancelled, and severe mental health impacts. It's not justice. It's neglect. 'Corrections officers are at breaking point. They tell me morale is at rock bottom. Staff don't feel safe, they don't feel supported, and they're leaving the system in droves. That's only making the crisis worse because the fewer officers we have, the more lockdowns we'll see.'
Free Malaysia Today
5 days ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Management failures worsened January violence, says prison officer
A Taiping Prison officer told a Suhakam inquiry that the overall environment there was 'unfit for both staff and inmates'. (Facebook pic) KUALA LUMPUR : A Taiping prison officer has criticised the facility's management, saying poor leadership and the inexperience of junior officers contributed to the violent scenes during an inmate relocation exercise in January. Ahmad Rizal, a prison inspector, testifying at a Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) inquiry here today, said many younger officers were ill-equipped to handle high-risk situations and claimed the overall prison environment was 'unfit for both staff and inmates'. He said junior officers were 'not trained or ready' for high-tension operations such as the Jan 17 transfer of more than 100 inmates from Hall B to Hall E. 'I was shocked when I first arrived,' he said, describing the cells as dark and cramped, with barely a few feet of space in each room. Rizal urged Suhakam to recommend improvements to the living conditions at Taiping prison and to consider replacing officers whom he described as unfit to handle volatile situations. He said inmates at other prisons were less likely to lash out due to lower stress levels, citing a more humane environment. Rizal was referring to the root of the Jan 17 incident, where inmates resisted relocation to Hall E after complaining about the lack of proper toilets in the hall's cells. He also alleged that some staff were colluding with inmates to sell banned items. 'We can catch the inmates, but when it comes to officers, we don't have enough proof,' he said. Psychological toll and regrets When shown CCTV footage of the Jan 17 incident, Rizal admitted he lost control and said the experience took an emotional toll on him. 'I couldn't sleep for months. I cried as soon as I got home. I felt like I had failed my family. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to protect them,' he said. He added that he had been undergoing psychiatric treatment since March and is on medication for depression and insomnia. He said his symptoms began in 2023 but worsened during his time at the Taiping prison. He said he had repeatedly asked for a transfer away from high-risk duties, but that his requests were denied. Rizal made these remarks at the Suhakam inquiry into the alleged abuse of more than 100 inmates by around 60 wardens during the Jan 17 relocation. The commission is investigating claims of brutality that allegedly led to the death of one inmate and injuries to several others.
The Independent
07-07-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Experts lift lid on drugs crisis in prisons
Experts warn that the drug crisis in British prisons is at an unprecedented level, making jails "almost impossible to run positively". Annual drug seizures by prison officers have reached record highs, with over 21,000 recorded in the year to March 2024, marking a 35 per cent increase. The widespread availability of illicit substances has led to a surge in medical emergencies, violence, and debt within prisons, with "blue-light" ambulance responses now a regular occurrence. The crisis significantly worsened during austerity years due to cuts in staffing and addiction treatment programmes, compounded by the emergence of new synthetic drugs and drone deliveries. Despite government claims of a "zero-tolerance approach" and new security measures, experts confirm that drugs remain the biggest challenge facing many prisons, driving criminality and undermining safety.
The Independent
06-07-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Eradicating drugs from prisons may be unrealistic, but it should be the goal
The widespread availability of drugs in British prisons has long been among the more baffling conundrums of national life. How come institutions specifically built and managed to be secure have a drug problem that has, by common consent, reached crisis proportions? To put it another way, how can it be that places expressly designed to prevent people from getting out find it so difficult to stop illicit, and ever more harmful, substances from getting in? The figures we report today are truly shocking – or they would be, were it not for the pervasive sense of resignation about everything that pertains to our prisons. The ubiquity of drugs then risks being seen as just one aspect of a disastrously failing system. It is more than that. It is at the root of many other prison problems. Recorded at 21,145, annual drug seizures by prison officers in the year to March 2024 were more than 35 per cent up on the previous year, and nudging the record of 21,574 set four years before. Given the likelihood of undetected, or unchecked, possession, the figure for actual seizures is likely to understate the problem. In what comes perilously close to a concession of defeat, the Independent Monitoring Boards of prisons in the UK describe the movement of drugs into these institutions as 'a seemingly unstoppable flow'. There was a time when prison was seen as an opportunity to treat those with a drug habit. Success may have been limited, but it seems an even less realistic objective today. In our report, Mike Trace, head of a charity providing drug treatment in prisons and former drugs 'Czar' in the Blair government, says the number of treatment programmes in prison, including drug-free wings, has been slashed from 110 in 2013 to just 15 now. It is by no means unheard of for offenders who entered prison clean to emerge from their sentence with a dependency likely to land them back behind bars. No one, of course, would argue that freeing prisons from the scourge of drugs is simple. If it were, it would have been done long before now. The extent to which the problem has grown in recent years reflects a host of factors, from cuts to prison staffing under the austerity policies of previous governments – which resulted in the loss of many more experienced staff – to technological developments, such as miniature mobile phones and drones that allow inmates to circumvent more traditional prison security. Drones also facilitate deliveries of drugs in far greater quantities than would be possible via visitors or corrupt employees, and reduce the effectiveness of recently introduced X-ray scanners. A further complication is the wider variety of illicit drugs in circulation, some being hard to identify, which can have more harmful effects than before. The consequence is an increase, both in emergency hospital admissions and in violence among inmates and towards staff. Reprisals for drug-related debts have become a particular problem – and these are debts, it should be stressed, that have been incurred in prison. In the past, it was sometimes argued that drug-taking was tolerated in some prisons because it could calm down otherwise under-occupied and frustrated inmates. That argument is less tenable now. All these changes are well known to the prison authorities and those with monitoring and policy responsibilities. In our report, His Majesty's chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, is quoted as saying that drugs are the biggest challenge currently facing many prisons, and that it is 'not acceptable that these levels of criminality are going on, unchecked'. He is right. It is not acceptable. But where is any real sense of urgency and direction to get to grips with such a pernicious and growing problem? The government has embarked on what it bills as the biggest overhaul of the prison system in decades. In the short term, it is addressing prison overcrowding through an emergency programme of early releases. It has a longer-term schedule for building new prisons and welcomes talk about a greater focus on work and rehabilitation. So far, so modestly good. But there is a lot of catching up to do, too – starting, perhaps, with better training, pay and status for prison staff. And it is hard not to detect a note of complacency in the response of the Justice Ministry to The Independent 's findings, which blamed past governments for the current situation, while asserting a 'zero-tolerance approach to drugs' and 'a clear impact' from the use of body scanners and drone no-fly zones. We are, though, a year into the new government, and it is hard to detect that tolerance for drugs in prison is any closer to zero than it was before, while the impact of scanners and no-fly zones seems a lot less clear than the Justice Ministry insists. Eradicating drugs from prison altogether may be unrealistic, but it should be the ambition, and it needs to be pursued with a lot more urgency and application than has been in evidence so far.
