Prison officers are fed up with conditions of work as they claim they have no authority anymore. In the meantime, reports that senior officers, led by DCP Jensingh Sibdoyal, are doing their utmost to undermine the authority of commissioner of prisons (CP) Bill Duff, are more insistent. The crisis is believed to have only just begun…

Detainees are having a heyday. There have been reports of them opposing discipline at Beau-Bassin prison; the virus has now reached Phoenix prison; incidents never seen before have taken place at the high security prison, better known as the Bastille, over the past week, resulting in prison officers calling in sick because they feel threatened.

On two occasions now, detainees have set fire to mattresses in their cells. How, why are questions no one is in any position to answer apart from the protagonists themselves but, so far, we have not been able to get hold of their cellular phone numbers. Nowadays getting hold of a detainee is easier than getting hold of the director of the Met station in Vacoas - and Mr Sokappadu is not shy.

Almost every evening, one gets phone calls from inmates of the central prison in Beau- Bassin. Sources say they are probably people from the same group with a definite agenda. But what is exactly their agenda? They claim to have none. “Members of the Prison Supporting Squad (PSS) are beating us up on instructions given to them by Sibdoyal”, they have told l’express. Those inmates are convinced that CP Bill Duff is unaware of their plight.

<B>Government has made it clear that it is supporting Duff. It’s all very well to support Duff while sitting in an air-conditioned office at Treasury Building; it doesn’t help when one has to deal with being fed false information on a daily basis.</B>

But he is aware. So this explanation is flawed. But, there again, there is no smoke without fire, they say. Could it be that inmates are aware of something we don’t know? In any event, more and more prison officers are coming forward to say that there is a definite strategy to undermine Duff's authority. They also say it is DCP Sibdoyal’s strategy. Some go even further and say that information is deliberately withheld from Duff in the light of the “strategy”. And, when we know that the key to problems and their resolution is… intelligence, there is a major problem somewhere. “The CP is not aware of what’s happening inside because he’s not being told”, say prison officers. One may logically deduce that, if Duff doesn’t have proper and adequate intelligence, he will not be able to lead his reform or adequately manage the penal institutions for that matter. If this is in fact the aim of the “plan”, it looks like it might succeed.

Unfortunately events have now reached a point where pettiness and personal relations are threatening the very security of the prison service. Control over the prisons is about to be lost, some prison officers fear. Alarmists add that it will happen sooner than later if something is not done soon.

The Government has made it plain and clear that it is supporting Duff. But it’s all very well to support Duff while sitting in an office at Treasury building; it doesn’t help when one has to deal with being fed false information on a daily basis. “We are sitting on a volcano. This attitude, if not kept in check, will eventually shift the control from the administration to within the four walls of the prison,” a prison officer has told l’express.

With this unhealthy background, is it any wonder that inmates are having a heyday? A prison officer explains: “As long as the administration is united and looks in one direction, attention is focused on detainees and they know they should tread carefully. But they are no longer the focus. The administration is divided and inmates have everything to gain in keeping this divide.” The latest incident to date is an example of what’s happening.

<B>Conflicting versions</B>

Reports say that on Sunday evening, a detainee set fire to his mattress… again. It all started on Wednesday when two inmates set fire to a mattress, manipulated the door leading to their block and threatened to contaminate prison officers with HIV-infected blood. To prove that they meant business, one of them broke a bulb, cut his forearm and showed them his blood. The prisoners spent the night outside their cells because reports say no reinforcement was sent despite distress calls to the administration in Beau-Bassin. In any event, a new mattress was given to the detainee to replace the one he had burnt. And he is supposed to have burnt the new one on Sunday.

Prison officers at Phoenix reportedly went to the police to report the matter and this time, the police did turn up. But we have two versions of the story. Prison administration says the detainee hadn’t carried out his threat. Prison officers beg to differ. So where is the truth? Was fire set or not? There have been no answers to this question so far. Duff says he has had intelligence informing him that the new mattress is still there. Officers claim the detainee actually had two mattresses and one of them is burnt.

The threatening detainee has however been sent to the prison hospital in Beau-Bassin and put under observation. Prison administrators believe him to be mentally ill. Officers who know the prisoner claim he is not ill at all and that he’s just a troublemaker. “But it’s easy to say he’s sick in the head, isn’t it? Then you don’t have to deal with the problem,” says an officer.

Governement sought to establish some order in the prisons when they recruited Bill Duff but it has unfortunately just made matters worse. “Sibdoyal wants to sit in Duff’s chair. That’s all that matters to him. And he will go to any lengths,” says a senior prison officer. Two questions: how far? And at what cost?