Officer shortage compromises prison safety, says POA

Shane Su­perville

The head of the Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) says chron­ic staffing short­ages with­in the prison sys­tem are un­der­min­ing of­fi­cers' abil­i­ty to pre­vent vi­o­lence and pro­tect in­mates, fol­low­ing the killing of a pris­on­er at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP), Arou­ca.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day af­ter the death of 48-year-old Christo­pher Ban­field, POA pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don de­scribed the in­ci­dent as trag­ic and said in­ad­e­quate man­pow­er con­tin­ues to af­fect se­cu­ri­ty across prison fa­cil­i­ties.

Ban­field was found ly­ing on the floor of his cell around 5.30 am on Tues­day by a prison of­fi­cer con­duct­ing rou­tine checks. In­ves­ti­ga­tors lat­er learned he had been beat­en dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with an­oth­er in­mate on Mon­day night and sus­tained se­vere in­juries to his head and face. He was pro­nounced dead short­ly af­ter be­ing tak­en to the prison in­fir­mary.

Gor­don said staffing lev­els with­in the prison ser­vice re­mained "far from op­ti­mal," lim­it­ing of­fi­cers' abil­i­ty to in­ter­vene be­fore in­ci­dents es­ca­late.

"Giv­en the cur­rent con­straints that we have, our abil­i­ty to in­ter­rupt, in­ter­cept and pre­vent these things are very much com­pro­mised."

He ex­plained prison fa­cil­i­ties are typ­i­cal­ly placed on lock­down from 9 pm to 5 am, dur­ing which of­fi­cers re­main at des­ig­nat­ed posts.

"Once the prison is mas­tered, which is locked down, the of­fi­cers have no ac­cess or ready ac­cess to the cor­ri­dors or the di­vi­sions.

"They will most like­ly be locked in­to the con­trol kiosks and that is where they will spend their du­ty.

"Of­ten­times you may hear things at night, or you may not hear things at all de­pend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion and lo­ca­tion."

Po­lice said a prison of­fi­cer dis­cov­ered Ban­field in a fe­tal po­si­tion dur­ing in­spec­tions on Tues­day morn­ing. The of­fi­cer alert­ed col­leagues and ob­served swelling to Ban­field's face and blood com­ing from his mouth.

He was tak­en to the prison in­fir­mary, where no vi­tal signs were de­tect­ed. A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer lat­er pro­nounced him dead.

Of­fi­cers from the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion and the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau vis­it­ed the prison and in­ter­viewed Ban­field's cell­mates. In­ves­ti­ga­tors were told Ban­field be­came in­volved in an ar­gu­ment with an­oth­er pris­on­er on Mon­day night which es­ca­lat­ed in­to a fight. Dur­ing the con­fronta­tion, he re­ceived mul­ti­ple blows to his head, face and body.

His body was tak­en to a fu­ner­al home pend­ing a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.