PRISON OFFICERS TO CARRY PEPPER SPRAY
Boost as jihadi attack risk grows
PRISON officers in Britain’s most dangerous jails will get pepper sprays to foil a growing risk of terror attacks behind bars.
Prison chiefs have indicated they will fast-track use of PAVA sprays in six high-security jails to combat a rising toll of radicalised inmates.
This follows last month’s alleged attack by Brusthom Ziamani which left five officers seriously injured at Category A Whitemoor jail in Cambridgeshire.
Ziamani, 24, jailed in 2015 for plotting to behead an Army cadet, and another inmate allegedly wore fake suicide bomb vests and stabbed officers with blades.
It is understood sprays will be introduced
“imminently”, once officers have been trained.
The Prison Officers’ Association says they should be used in all 117 jails.
Ministry of Justice figures reveal the number of assaults on jail staff remain at a record high, with more than 10,000 attacks in the year to September 2019.
Yet prison chiefs have recently resisted pressure to introduce sprays, fearing a legal challenge by the equalities watchdog which claims they breach criminals’ human rights. In a trial of the spray at four jails in 2018, it was used in nonviolent incidents more than a third of the time, contravening official guidance.
Last year the Equality and Human Rights Commission said it was funding a prisoner’s legal case to block any plans to roll out PAVA sprays to all jails.
But it is understood the Prison and Probation Service has now caved to pleas for the spray at the six jails because of escalated fear of attacks by jihadis.
It is believed POA chief Mark Fairhust told prison bosses after Ziamani’s alleged attack that if “brave colleagues had not intervened, we could be deliberating over the murder of a prison officer on duty”.
The Prison and Probation Service said it “was the first serious attack on a staff member for some years that had an extremist ideological motivation”.