The Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) has raised an alarm over what it de­scribes as poor co­or­di­na­tion, in­ad­e­quate prepa­ra­tion and a lack of re­spect in the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) op­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing the role and treat­ment of prison of­fi­cers.

In a state­ment from its pres­i­dent, Ger­ard Gor­don, the POA said it had been led to be­lieve that the po­lice and the reg­i­ment would as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for re­mand­ed in­mates dur­ing the emer­gency. How­ev­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion claimed that same re­spon­si­bil­i­ty has now fall­en on prison of­fi­cers, who were re­cent­ly brand­ed “cor­rupt” by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

“No pro­vi­sions have been made to ac­com­mo­date our of­fi­cers, and no clear op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures have been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to en­sure or­der and safe­ty,” the re­lease said.

Ac­cord­ing to the POA, prison of­fi­cers have been giv­en no ad­e­quate sleep­ing or toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, de­spite work­ing ex­tend­ed hours in high-stress con­di­tions. The as­so­ci­a­tion said this has placed an un­fair bur­den on staff al­ready un­der pres­sure.

Gor­don al­so con­demned what he de­scribed as “gross dis­re­spect” to­ward the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons and crit­i­cised the lack of cour­tesy and ac­cusato­ry tone di­rect­ed at prison per­son­nel.

“It un­der­mines the tire­less work of the men and women of the Prison Ser­vice, who con­tin­ue to put their lives on the line to up­hold law and or­der,” the state­ment read.

The POA al­so cit­ed fail­ures in plan­ning for ba­sic op­er­a­tional is­sues such as vis­i­tor ac­cess and court at­ten­dance, at­tribut­ing these to a lack of mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion with the Prison Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“This lack of co­or­di­na­tion not on­ly jeop­ar­dis­es op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy but al­so erodes con­fi­dence in the sys­tem,” the re­lease said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion warned that the long-term con­se­quences of what it called a “mis­man­aged op­er­a­tion” will even­tu­al­ly be­come clear, and ex­pressed doubt that sat­is­fac­to­ry an­swers will be pro­vid­ed when ques­tions are fi­nal­ly asked.

“We con­tin­ue to call for re­spect, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and gen­uine col­lab­o­ra­tion among all stake­hold­ers as we work to main­tain the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of our na­tion dur­ing these try­ing times,” Gor­don said.