Pressures from “rocketing” levels of self-harm, suicide, and violence within British jails are pushing prison officers to walk away from their jobs, a national union representative has said.
Inadequate wages, an “unachievable” retirement age, and a lack of protective equipment has also led to thousands of experienced staff ditching prison careers and moving into “safer” jobs, he said.
According to figures released by the Ministry of Justice last week, one in seven prison officers quit their job last year, and one-third of those now in the job are new recruits.
The HM Prison and Probation Service Workforce Quarterly Report also revealed the number of uniformed officers in bands three to five—which includes prison officers, supervising officers, and custodial managers—working in public-sector prisons in England and Wales fell by 523 over the course of 2022.
During that same period, the number of prisoners grew by 3,000.
The leaving rate for uniformed officers was 15.2 percent, while the proportion of those who had been in the job for less than three years rose from 30 percent to 33 percent within just one year.
Constant Threat of Violence
Speaking to The Epoch Times on Friday, the POA chair described some of the hostile and violent working environments faced by British prison officers.“For the likes of me, I’ve got 31 years in the job. If I could go to a similar job with similar money or slightly less, then I'd leave tomorrow,” Fairhurst said.
“And the reason for that is when I joined the job, I had a retirement age of 60,“ he said. “So I could retire at age 60 on a full pension with a gratuity. In 2015, the Tory government ripped that away from us, and said you will retire at your state pension age. Now my retirement age is the state pension age, which for me is 67.”
“But for the new kids joining now, it’s 68,“ he said. ”So now I’ve got to work an extra seven years before I can draw my full pension.”
From his years of experience in his role at HM Prison Liverpool, the prison officer said prisoner violence has soared within the youth, male and, now, female estates.
“We are dealing with an ... increasingly violent prison population who’ve got no respect for authority,” he said. “It’s a reflection on society, which has become more disrespectful toward authority figures, and more violent.”
“But in prisons, when prisoners notice that there’s a severe lack of staff, they’ve got the upper hand,“ said Fairhurst. ”And you are getting more and more inexperienced staff who may be joining the services as their first job, with no life skills, who just can’t cope with what’s in front of them, and don’t know how to deal with experienced prisoners.
“Experienced prisoners with inexperienced staff is a recipe for disaster.
“You need that voice of experience on your shoulder to learn off people and show people how to confront a violent situation and calm the situation down,” he said.
Call for Pepper Spray
During his evidence to the Justice Select Committee on Feb. 7, the prison officer representative described a serious attack carried out on one guard by an under-18 offender.The staff member was left with a broken jaw, and lost six teeth as a result of the attack.
Fairhurst said prison officers were facing similar life-threatening attacks on a weekly basis.
He has called for the roll-out of pepper spray to staff in all jails, including youth and women’s prisons, where staff currently do not carry batons or other safety equipment.
Pelargonic Acid Vanillylamide (PAVA)—a synthetic version of pepper spray—is currently only used by prison officers in Britain’s male prison estate.
“In the youth custody estate, we’re dealing with the most violent cohort, that is the most violent estate,” Fairhurst told The Epoch Times.
“Staff don’t carry batons like they do in the adult state. They don’t carry rigid bar cuffs, and they don’t carry PAVA—all they’ve got is a body-worn video camera and a polo shirt.
“We’ve been asking for PAVA in that estate for years now, because it’s such a political decision,” he said. “And because you’re dealing with under-18s who are officially classed as children, they’re reluctant to give it to us ... but they are going to have to do something because in that estate, more and more of my members are receiving life-threatening injuries, or life-changing injuries, so something’s got to change.”
In terms of violence in women’s prisons, the POA chair said: “We’re dealing with more and more complex women in the female estate, who are prolific self-harmers.
“Self harm has rocketed in that estate, [and] they are increasingly more violent,” he said.
Horror injuries and psychological trauma from prisoner attacks are also leading to officers being medically retired from their jobs, according to Fairhurst.
“We get more and more people retired from the service with PTSD because there isn’t sufficient care in place for them when they’re on duty dealing with traumatic incidents.
Demoralised and Demotivated
The prison union chief says that only direct and urgent government action can change the future of the service.“It’s a crisis, we are in meltdown. And only the government can change it,” he said. “They need a massive investment in staff. They need to increase the salary of prison officers to make it attractive to those who will probably consider it in a second career, and have gone through life or, maybe, [are] in their mid-40s and thinking: ‘I quite fancy that.’
“Or ex-armed forces who are leaving the job—they’re not going to join our job with the current salary with the risks that we face. They want more in a salary and more on offer.”
He added: “We need to give more of a career structure for people so they progress through the ranks, and we need to embrace those with experience and respect those people with experience instead of demonising them all the time.
“That coupled with a low retirement age and the proper protections in place to staff—by issuing PAVA to everyone—will make the job safer for us and will keep us in the job,” he said.
“But at the moment we feel so demoralised, demotivated, unappreciated. We’ve got no option, we just want to leave.”
When asked in the Commons last week by Labour MP Mary Kelly Foy whether the government would reduce the retirement age for prison officers, Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said he would not revisit the issue.
“My door is always open to discuss matters with prison officers, in particular the POA,” Raab said on Tuesday.
Fairhurst said the current retirement age for prison guards was unrealistic.
“He needs to revisit it whether he likes it or not,“ Fairhurst said, referring to the Justice Secretary. ”More and more staff will leave because they don’t want to work in their 60s in a hostile environment.”
