by Pauline ETIENNE

It?s too much! The latest attack on a prison officer once again points at the difficulty prison officers have to do their job. The smallest quarrel has the potential of becoming an uncontrollable fight within the prison premises ? and this is often due to a small number of detainees only! But the small number of prison officers is far from enough to deal with them and this is how such situations often degenerate.

On Monday, a simple call for order by an officer to a prisoner has led to fights within the central prison ? ?never seen before? ? according to some prison officers. During the fight involving about 40 prison officers, 30 syringes were found in one of the cells.

But the officer in charge knowingly chose not to include this discovery into the research. ?He said we would have too many problems with this if we report it. Just throw the syringes away,? relates a witness.

This is a bad signal. If prison officers start getting scared, then there is no hope that the situation will get any better.

The problem, they say, is that they are afraid that senior officers or public opinion may be made aware of the sad events. They do not want to be blamed for a situation that goes beyond their own capacities.

Some prison officers indeed justify this rise of violence by a lack of staff to deal with such a high number of detainees. ?Officers do everything except look after detainees. They work at the canteen, they replace nurses,? one of the officers points out.

The authorities should go to the root of the problem; they might then realise that it is a vicious circle.

The reason for such a low number of staff might actually be the fact that officers realise that work is too hard in prisons. And, as the number of officers keeps on decreasing, the job becomes even more difficult? And this is how the vicious circle develops.

Hence, why not try and attract more officers within prisons to make the job easier? If prisoners realise that there are people facing who will not be afraid to react and eventually take action, then they will think twice before showing indiscipline.

However, to encourage more officers in prisons, the latter must feel that their work is useful and that their lives are not in danger each time they reprimand a detainee.

Calm must come back into all prisons so that detainees can get something out of it when they go out.

They have to be given psychological aid or must learn a job or be led to a better behaviour so that they have less risks of committing crimes after their sentence. This will also help restore some kind of order into prisons and help prison officers do their job properly.

No piecemeal solution will be efficient for prisons. They will have to go through a whole process of change to avoid such incidents as last Monday?s?