Prison officers ‘working their socks off’ to keep control, says union boss

Prison officers are “working their socks off” to keep control in Scotland’s jails after the population hit a record high, a trade union has said.

The Scottish Prison Service said on Sunday the number of prisoners was at record levels of 8,430 last Tuesday, though by Friday it had dropped to 8,391.

On BBC Radio Scotland on Wednesday, Phil Fairlie, the assistant general secretary of the Scottish Prison Officers Association, said jails are not “out of control”, but members are struggling to maintain order.

Speaking after the union released a report based on a survey and focus groups with members, Mr Fairlie said: “The biggest worry for us just now is staff, I think, feel unsafe inside the prisons, I don’t think they feel they’ve got proper control.

“I don’t mean that the prisons are out of control, but they are working their socks off every single day to try and keep that control.

“They have been doing incredible work remarkably well for a long, long period of time and they are due enormous credit for that, but they are human beings, they’re not robots.”

He added: “The report talks about increasing staff sickness levels, more abuse and assaults on staff, increasing tensions in the prisons and additional pressure on staff, so it’s a pretty scary and bleak picture that staff are painting.”

Mr Fairlie’s comments come as regulations are due to be debated by Holyrood’s Criminal Justice Committee to bring forward a third early release scheme for inmates to ease overcrowding on the prison estate.

Ahead of the vote, Mr Fairlie said the resulting relief on the system would be welcome, but he warned it will only be “temporary” without wider reform.

Reducing the number of prisoners, he added, would make a “significant difference” to staff being able to do what is required of them on a daily basis.

“The issue for us is this is now the third time in this position and the relief we get from that, which is welcome, is very short-lived,” Mr Fairlie said.

“We do start to see those numbers creeping back up again – if it’s not the same people coming back, it is more people being added to the prisoner population.

“It is going to take a much more fundamental change to the system than that.”