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THE GENERAL SECRETARY of the Prison Officers’ Association has hit out at what he said was a lack of convictions for inmates who attack officers.
Speaking at the Prison Officers’ Association annual delegate conference in Galway last night, John Clinton also said that reduced staffing levels was increasing the risk for serving officers.
Clinton pointed to recent cases in which prison officers were allegedly attacked by inmates, but the inmates weren’t prosecuted as a result.
“The reduced staffing levels contributes directly to the risk for prison officers with ever-increasing levels of assaults,” Clinton told members of the POA last night.
“To add insult to the injuries inflicted on our officers there is no penalty for the prisoners involved,” he said.
“It is now the case that staff, who have been seriously assaulted and report their assault to the relevant authorities, cannot get a conviction, in spite of a wealth of available evidence.
In one significant case there was even an admission of guilt from the prisoner, yet no conviction.
Clinton pointed towards two incidents in which prison officers were allegedly attacked in a Midlands prison, but said no convictions were brought as a result of lack of available evidence.
“The issue of violence in prisons regrettably continues, with a number of very serious incidents involving assaults on prison staff in the past year,” said Clinton.
He echoed recent calls at the Garda Representative Association annual meeting for mandatory sentencing for people convicted of attacking security officials.
“Mandatory sentencing, as raised by the gardaí earlier this week is undoubtedly needed as one of the responses to assaults on our members, while carrying out their duties,” he said.
“Staffing crisis”
Clinton said that the service was facing a “staffing crisis”, and that there weren’t enough workers to “do what we are required to do”.
“All of us are aware that retirements this year will exceed recruitment figures; this is not sustainable and it creates an ongoing additional risk for prison staff and prisoners,” he said.
He called for officers’ pay to be restored to 2008 levels.
Clinton pointed to recent analysis conducted by the State Claims Agency which found that the projected level of assaults by prisoners on prison staff for 2017 was estimated at 107.
“The nature of these assaults included concussion, lacerations, cuts, fractures burns and bites. Most of these injuries were to the head and face thereby leaving a permanent reminder to the injured officer of the incident,” said Clinton.
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This just in, people are basically sheep and can be manipulated very easily.
Let me guess… You consider yourself above it all?
‘Mainstream media’ works the same way. It distorts headlines & manipulates people. It often plays on peoples emotions rather than their intellect.
We often read newspapers or online news sites, and taking what we read there as ‘fact’. Most newspapers are far from neutral. We are really reading, is the agendas and opinion of the editorial board, of the news site.
Everything is carefully spun to appear as ‘neutral’.
T.I.M., Install adblock and ghostery and you will be above it it all because you won’t see any of the crap Facebook tries to feed you about “OMG this woman is hated by the beauty industry” and trying to sign you up to Farmville.
The faster people get over their obsession with social media the faster we will grow as a society.
#like
I bet this only works on women.
#sexistbuttrue
Richard – Humans are social by nature. Social media will remain.
“Social” media ironically is anything but social. That’s the problem. It’s a platform for advertising and information gathering.
Social media is social in the context of Internet usage.
Not in the context of human interaction which is what Facebook would have you believe.
I was in a good mood before I read this article!
u ok hun txt me xx don’t mind de begrudgers deyll get what’s cummin’ to dem.
Stopped using Facebook years ago!
Ditto. A very large waste of power, racks, cooling, cabling and servers in my opinion. Not to mention brain power.
“Not having a Facebook account” is the new “I don’t own a TV.”
I don’t think you can compare tv to Facebook.
I wasn’t comparing the two. I was comparing the two statements.
You were comparing by implication.
No I wasn’t.
Yes you were.
No he weren’t.
Yes I wasn’t?
Anyone know what the next big social site will be?
If I knew, I wouldn’t be sharing it!
Pornbook
No different than staggering articles with dubious statistical information over time to sway opinion.
The property prices articles in the journal?
Facebook is the single most destructive force to productivity in the history of mankind. It should be destroyed.
This is a game changer. One-seventh of the world’s population is in the hands of these deviants.
I’ve noticed for some time that the App Sky news has also been ‘introducing’ foreign bits for a while now. They have invariably been from the US and Pakistan. And they have always been about some violent outrage which smacks of the same thing as Facebook.
But Facebook is a very big and frightening machine that can and by the looks of things will be used against us.
Like voting. Protest and survive!
have your say