I have considerable sympathy with David Lammy’s current predicament (Lammy says he was right not to discuss mistakenly freed prisoner at PMQs, 6 November). Our entire justice system was woefully neglected throughout 14 years of Conservative tenure. But this neglect was particularly calamitous in relation to our prisons. Rectifying the obscenity that currently passes for our prison system will require enormous government investment of public money at a time when public finances are stretched and sympathy for our prison population is low: there are precious few votes in a manifesto promise to improve the lot of prisoners.
However, I feel we must look at this disgraceful situation from the standpoint of the poor prison officers who are tasked with working in these dreadful institutions. If conditions in our largely outdated prisons are bad for the inmates, just imagine what it is like having to work in them. It must be incredibly difficult to recruit new staff to the Prison Service and nigh on impossible to retain them, leaving the service dependent on young, inexperienced, demotivated staff with poor morale who are regularly exposed to high levels of verbal and physical abuse.
