The bud­get has left the Pris­ons Ser­vice want­i­ng. This was the view of Ce­dron Richards, pres­i­dent of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai pre­sent­ed the 2012/2013 bud­get in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. Richards is al­so call­ing for an ur­gent meet­ing with new­ly sworn-in Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore to dis­cuss what he de­scribes as sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems fac­ing the ser­vice. In his two-hour-long pre­sen­ta­tion Howai out­lined a num­ber of an­ti-crime mea­sures which in­clude re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion for pris­on­ers and train­ing for pris­ons of­fi­cers. While the Pris­ons Ser­vice has wel­comed the ini­tia­tives, Richards said they were not enough. "We agree train­ing is a good ini­tia­tive but you can't just an­nounce train­ing for pris­ons of­fi­cers and leave it at that. What ex­act­ly does that mean? Is it a one-off train­ing? Al­so de­scrib­ing the mea­sures as ter­ri­bly lack­ing in specifics, Richards said the bud­get had al­so re­sult­ed in dis­ap­point­ment of the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship."No em­pha­sis was placed on up­lift­ing the ser­vice and yet pris­ons of­fi­cers play a key part in the fight against crime," Richards said. He said the as­so­ci­a­tion met with for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney and out­lined cer­tain pro­pos­als which it had hoped would be in­clud­ed in yes­ter­day's bud­get.

Richards said these in­clud­ed:

• Up­grad­ing prison in­fra­struc­ture;

• Im­prov­ing health and safe­ty at all pris­ons;

• In­creas­ing and im­prov­ing the ve­hi­cles al­lo­cat­ed to pris­ons of­fi­cers.

He said he hoped the Gov­ern­ment would pro­vide de­tails of how it in­tends to strength­en the Prison Ser­vice.