Unless we urgently give them better protection, a prison official will be murdered – I won’t exaggerate

Outside supermarkets and provincial nightclubs in London, you will see security personnel wearing stabbing vests.

In various jobs, people sometimes have to face an aggressive public, and personal protective equipment has become commonplace.

It is surprising, therefore, that frontline prison staff work in greater danger, often restricted by criminals of violence and potentially lethal behavior, and did not issue a stab vest that could stop attacking with a blade weapon.

Essentially, they are dispatched to work every day, with only one porous shirt and knife angle between them. This is unbearable.

Ten days ago, in HMP Frankland, HASHEM ABEDI, one of the country’s most dangerous prisoners used improvised stabbing weapons and hot oil to attack three officers. The two left life-threatening injuries.

crisis

I am very worried that an officer will be murdered for the first time unless urgent measures are taken to provide better protection for prison staff and ensure safer restrictions on dangerous prisoners to stronger limitations.

If this happens, the impact will be terrible. Not only for victims and their families, but for the entire prison service. It is so close to the breakout point that we can see a full-scale crisis breaking out.

Year by year, our severe attacks on prison officials increased by 19%. As a direct result, the incidence of officials taking leave due to stress-related illnesses is at the highest level in history.

Lost hundreds of thousands of days a year. This alone should be the subject of parliamentary debate.

Year by year, our severe attacks on prison officials increased by 19%. As a direct result, the incidence of police leave is at the highest ever due to stress-related illnesses (Photo: Wandsworth Prison)

This knock effect on this is a crisis of recruitment and retention. Although the law does not allow prison officials to strike, if they have reasonable fears and their lives are threatened, they cannot be legally forced to go to work.

It is shocking that in the face of such a violent attack, a national law enforcement agency obviously cares so little about the safety of its employees that it has been abandoned for years as they provide them with enough protection to prevent fatal attacks.

On April 12, when Abedi launched a noticeable premeditated attack in Frankland’s “extremist separatist department”, the officers he attacked were equipped with only extendable batons and incompetent spray cans.

I know that the spray is deployed, but far from being a deterrent to the attacker, and the gas emitted in the narrow corridor of the device may actually hinder the response of officials who suffered shocked colleagues.

Abedi, the younger brother of a suicide bomber, killed 22 people and injured hundreds of people in May 2017 at the Manchester Arena. Indeed, it was Hashem Abedi who planned the attack and created the bomb and wrapped it in shrapnel.

Now sentenced to at least 55 years in prison, he is considered one of the most violent extremists in British detention. Its beggar belief was not only that he was given the freedom to make weapons and make bubbled hot oil, but that the officers guarding him were unable to obtain adequate protective equipment.

The police will correctly refuse to serve in this situation. If violent criminals carry out similar attacks on police outside the prison, I think it makes sense that they will use lethal force to defend themselves.

ABEDI should be locked for at least 23 hours a day in design so that any employee must contact him directly. He is a resourceful and determined terrorist who will try to kill again if given the chance.

That is, the UK must not follow American models, where the guards guard the wings of the automatic weapons patrol prison and shooter and sniper rifles are watchmen.

It is foolish to routinely act as an officer to provide deadly guns in our prisons. They are so confused at the moment that the risk of their fall into prisoners is too high.

But, as long as there are correct safeguards, there is a strong argument to equip the expert response prison officials with Tasers.

During the trial of Hashem Abedi, 24, on Wednesday, Ahmed Hassan, 22, and Muhammed Saeed, 23, played a video to the jury during the trial, Muhammed Saeed, 23, who left fear of his life (2020 video) before launching an attack on Paul Edwards, 57, Belmarsh officer,

And we must stop with wool-conscious reformers claiming that the presence of officers who sting the vest will help the “militarization” of the prison and create an environment that traumatizes prisoners.

As the hustle and bustle of change reach a fever, Attorney General Shabana Mahmood needs to respond immediately to the multiple threats facing our prisons and their prisoners, especially the increasingly sinister activities of Islamic organizations.

hatred

Robert Jenrick warned in an email last week that our prisons are increasingly under control of religious extremists as the opposite number on the conservative bench. Forced conversion is common because prisoners refuse to comply with hardline Islamic laws and face systematic bullying and attacks. Those who violate Muslim gangs usually have to put them in quarantine units to keep themselves safe.

Ten years ago, I had been advocating the establishment of separation units for oppressors rather than victims as a way to bring subversive Islamic hatred missionaries out of the ordinary people.

In some prisons, at least, this practice has effectively reversed, as those who resist missionaries who must be quarantined are apparently. At the same time, violent terrorist prisoners such as Abedi who are fixed in the murderer should not belong to these units first. They may need to be held in new accommodations, designed to eliminate the risk of attacks on employees.

Employee abduction is a constant danger, especially in high security prisons. If the prisoner takes the officer hostage, all the necessary means must be used to carry out the rapid rescue. This includes providing a dedicated tactical response team that is always available for prisoners to escape from the cell.

If terrorists take officers hostages today, their goal is likely to be to murder the employee and spread the bill online. I can’t say with confidence that today’s prisons are equal to preventing such incidents.

trauma

External forces are also working. What I worry most is the prevalence of drones, flying to prison by external operators.

Currently, these are widely used for drug use and cell phones to prisoners, with machines wandering outside windows or falling into sports fields.

Some drones can carry payloads of 15 kg, or nearly three stones. This is a lot of cocaine – but they can also be used to airlift guns or even Semtex over prison walls.

Charlie Taylor, the prison’s chief inspector, said the lack of defense against drones in high-security prisons is a national security threat.

The Attorney General now has a chance to check the failures that allowed Abedi’s brutal attack. The focus must be on civil servants serving in our prisons, rather than going home alone, rather than being assigned to the trauma department.

Failure to act means sadly that the prospect of prison officials being murdered is inevitable. I’m not exaggerating. We are very close.

• Professor Ian Acheson led the Ministry of Justice commissioned Islamic extremism to be independent review of Islamic extremism. He is the former warden