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Prison officers have said there's been one attack a week in Mountjoy this year. Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie

'Things are not getting better': Prison officers say they're attacked a lot more than official stats say

Jim Mitchell, from the Prison Officers’ Association. has said the official figures “don’t reflect” the situation on the ground.

THE OFFICIAL STATISTICS on the number of assaults on prison officers does not accurately reflect the number of times they are attacked, according to the Prison Officers’ Association (POA).

The association, which is holding its annual conference in Kilkenny today, said that despite the Prison Service’s official number of assaults dropping over the past five years, “things are not getting better” for prison officers.

Last year, for example, there 107 recorded assaults on prison officers but POA deputy general secretary Jim Mitchell told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the true figure may be far greater.

He said: “The figures don’t reflect what we’re being told on the ground, and it doesn’t reflect what we’re being told by our representatives in each and every institution.

We would have had a significant number of assaults over the Christmas period alone, in Mountjoy and the Midlands there were 22 assaults on staff.

He also said that, so far this year, they’ve had reports of one assault a week on staff in Mountjoy.

Mitchell said that the difficulty comes as the Prison Services counts “direct assaults” on staff, and not cases where a prison officer may get injured in the course of breaking up a fight.

He said: “For example, in Mountjoy where there’s a significant amount of gangs there are logistical difficulties that staff face on each and every day in dealing with those and [the difficulty] trying to keep them apart is that an amount of our people end up caught in that and end just as injured and just as damaged by it.

In our opinion, they have to be able to see year-on-year things are getting better. We don’t believe they are.

Mitchell advocated for more standardised equipment, citing an example from Copenhagen where every officer carries a baton, cuffs and pepper spray as part of their uniform.

He also said that body cameras for staff would solve many issues that they face.

The association is also calling for the Director of Prisons to reinstate the policy of withdrawal of remission – time off sentence for good behaviour – as punishment for prisoners who commit serious disciplinary offences.

Mitchell said that not being able to withdraw remission meant that prisoners could “act with impunity” and that it sends out the wrong message.

The POA will ballot members on calls for the reinstatement of the punishment today.

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    Mute Aidan Leonard
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    Sep 7th 2021, 7:29 AM

    You forgot to mention the amount if technology around today that was directly inspired by Sci fi too…..

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    Mute SPQH
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    Sep 7th 2021, 10:10 AM

    @Aidan Leonard: a lot of the look of modern technology is inspired by sci-fi and how it shows how cool something could be, but a lot of the nuts and bolts come from just a need to get something done in a certain way or for efficiency. The first mainframes were mainly military linked and the development of the nuclear bomb and the organisation of large scale logistics and navigation of missiles and seas had a lot to do with it (see Grace Hopper) also educational, like the Plato project, they basically invented flat touchscreens and interconnected networks (independent of arpanet) in the 60s because they needed to but they weren’t thinking of the likes of star trek at all.

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    Mute Jj
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    Sep 7th 2021, 9:20 AM

    We can make video calls to people around the world and travel to the other side of the planet in 24h, which we couldn’t do at the turn of the 20th century. No doubt big advancements will be made in the next 100 years, although with flight there was about 400 years in the difference between conception and realisation.

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    Mute john smith iv
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    Sep 7th 2021, 12:53 PM

    @Jj: flight has slowed down in technological advances. Compare 1900-1940, 1940-1980 and 1980-2020. Maybe it will start up again but I feel that the billionaires might be engaging in pet projects. Definitely Bezos. Musk has something worthwhile going on.

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    Mute Sean May
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    Sep 7th 2021, 10:49 AM

    An interesting and enjoyable read, Mr Fennel. As a life-long fan of Science-Fiction myself, I can certainly relate.

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