POA ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2023 EASTBOURNE

At the start of POA annual conference in Eastbourne, General Secretary Steve Gillan reflects on changing attitudes to what’s happening behind those high walls.

There seems to be much more interest in prisons among the public, press and politicians since our last conference a year ago – and that can only be a good thing.

For far too long, the reality of living and working behind bars has been hidden by the high walls and huge gates my members pass through every day to keep their communities safe.

Out of sight, out of mind, so the saying goes. But the pandemic threw a spotlight on the state of our jails and gave people a taste of life under lockdown.

While once we could rely only on the Morning Star to report fairly on the unique challenges and risks faced by prison staff, now we see a whole range of media willing to give a voice to the “forgotten service,” as many of my members see themselves.

POLITICAL PARTIES ARE SHOWING AN AVID INTEREST

Politicians, too, are speaking up more. As the Tories trash their reputation as the “party of law and order” – exposing themselves as one of crime and chaos instead – Labour and the other opposition parties have tried to fill the vacuum. Keir Starmer even used a recent session of Prime Minister’s Questions to highlight a horrendous and cowardly attack on a prison officer and the shameful suspended sentence the guilty prisoner received.

Many of my members will be surprised that the attacker was charged at all, with the Crown Prosecution Service often deciding that such prosecutions are “not in the public interest".

Prisons are in a state of emergency and the POA again calls for a Royal Commission on prisons and the wider criminal justice system.

THE NEED FOR A PUBLIC INQUIRY INTO PRISONS AND THE WIDER CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Such a public inquiry has been POA policy since 2016 and indeed pledged in the Conservative’s 2019 manifesto – and I believe it is both urgently needed and entirely appropriate as POA members continue to protect the general public even although our criminal justice system is in disarray from years of cuts in the name of austerity.

Our criminal justice system is broken, from a decade of court closures causing unbearable backlogs to a failed privatisation experiment destroying a once world-class probation service.

But it is in our prisons where savage budget cuts and government negligence and neglect have caused the most damage and created the most danger – both to those inside them and to society at large.

ACADEMIES OF CRIME

Prisons have become academies of crime, with a toxic cocktail of squalid overcrowding, soaring violence and desperation among prisoners, cared for by increasingly inexperienced staff being left to their own devices without adequate training. All too often, our newer staff become demoralised and leave the service as quickly as they joined. That is no reflection on those staff, many of whom are POA members, but a sad indictment on employer and government officials in not protecting their interests from day one.

Since 2010, more than 100,000 years of cumulative prison officer experience have been lost – that’s 100,000 years of jail craft flushed away with no justification other than to save money and cheapen the terms and conditions of new entrants who then cannot rely on the experience to assist them in their early years.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF PRISONS?

We need to ask fundamental questions such as what is the point of prisons – to punish or to rehabilitate?

Most prisoners are eventually released, but what kind of condition do we want them to leave in?

Do we want them leaving prison more criminalised and traumatised than when they arrived – and see wider society then pay the price?

Because if not, the government needs to give back the money it took from the prison service in the name of austerity and fix the crisis this created.

When questioned on the delay to their promised public inquiry, ministers blame Covid and imply it’s now unnecessary because of the great improvements they claim to be making.

But this is nonsense – the pandemic has made a Royal Commission more important than ever, as prisons are still reeling from restricted regimes and violence is still rising, despite all the empty promises made in the government’s impotent strategy papers.

WHOSE VOICES ARE TO BE HEARD?

Of course, the POA would want the critical role played by prison staff to be at the heart of this investigation, but it is important that all voices are heard for the commission to paint a full picture.

Prisoners, ex-prisoners, victims, charities, campaigners and the general public – as well as MOJ and HMPPS officials and the numerous corporate bodies currently profiting from incarceration – should all be invited to give evidence and help shape the future of a fairer and fully functioning justice system.

This is too important for political posturing – justice is foundational to a civilised society and simply cannot be delivered on the cheap.

Yet governments treat this vital public service like a secondclass citizen – never protected from austerity cuts, bloated with over-promoted managers and suffering from a higher turnover of secretaries of state than staff on the front line!

FIXING SOCIETY AND OUR PRISONS

You can’t fix society until you fix society’s prisons. And the most effective way to do that is through a full public inquiry with maximum statutory powers.

As a bare minimum, we need a properly funded prison system that encourages recruitment and retention of front-line staff.

We need a just pension age for prison officers and related grades given the physicality of the job and the violence my members face daily; 68 is simply too late.

RESTORING THE RIGHT TO STRIKE

We need pay that addresses the cost-of-living crisis and a government that will right the wrongs of the past 30 years of restricting my members’ basic rights by being banned from taking any form of industrial action. If the Scottish Government can restore the right to strike for POA members in Scotland without the sky falling in then the same can and should be achieved in the England/Wales service and Northern Ireland. I applaud the Scottish government for restoring a fundamental human right and the Westminster government have much to learn from an administration in Scotland which listened to the POA and delivered.

A NEW DEAL FOR POA MEMBERS

We need a new deal for working people that includes sectoral collective bargaining, so workers can’t be pitted against each other in a race to the bottom for pay, terms and conditions.

With one voice, the POA calls for a fresh look at our prison estate. We’re willing to play our part to build a better prison service – we just need a government brave enough to enact a Royal Commission, hold that public inquiry and have a criminal justice system and prison service that we can be proud of in the future; a system that protects victims of crime and the general public but at the same time recognises the professionalism of the role that prison officer grades and operational support grades play in the outstanding work that they do on behalf of society, and rewarding them through pay and decent terms and conditions for that work. l

STEVE GILLAN
GENERAL SECRETARY