The prison service in the North is facing a crisis due to uncertainty over its future, job reductions, and low staff morale, according to a report published yesterday.
The report, by the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, accused prison officers of a "basic lack of professional pride in their work" and said it was alarmed at the high levels of absenteeism.
The committee was chaired by the former Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Brooke, and included four Northern Ireland MPs. The report said uncertainty over the prison service's future following the signing of the Belfast Agreement was placing a "dangerous strain" on the prison system.
Management's top priority must be to tackle low morale among staff who fear they could lose their jobs as a result of the early release programme for paramilitary prisoners, which is expected to lead to the closure of the Maze prison and a massive scaling down of the service.
The committee said it was "unacceptable" that the service still had not drawn up plans for making the necessary redundancies. There appeared to be a "widespread and deep-rooted" lack of respect between management and staff, who "systematically avoided" training programmes aimed at improving the situation.
The MPs called for the appointment of a new prisons ombudsman for Northern Ireland and said the role of the Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales should be extended to cover the North.
One of the main indications of low morale was an "abnormally high" sickness rate - particularly at the Maze - which meant there was a constant shortage of officers. Measures introduced to reward staff with good attendance records seemed unrealistic, the report said, while the high level of absenteeism was a major obstacle to making staff training programmes work.
"The combined problems of low morale and high sickness levels reveal a basic lack of professional pride on the part of officers in the service," the report said. "A properly instituted training system which is geared to improvement of officers' skills can do much to change attitudes. The present training programme is clearly failing; no training that is systematically avoided by staff can be effective."
The committee also said it should be an urgent priority to redress the imbalance between Protestants and Catholics, who accounted for just 6.9 per cent of the service's uniformed and governor grades.
The MPs expressed concern at the service's failure to produce high-calibre candidates for senior managerial posts, which led to the "unsupportable" decision to combine the post of governor of the Maze with that of director of operations.
The report also criticised the lack of adequate facilities for holding girls under 17 years of age, and the absence of a vulnerable prisoners unit for sex offenders and other prisoners at risk of attack from fellow inmates.
The chairman of the Prison Officers' Association, Mr Finlay Spratt, blamed the low morale among officers on poor management. "This report bears out what I have been saying for years. You cannot run a prison service if the discipline is gone. It's understandable that prison officers have no pride in their job when you consider the poor management team we have.
"The Government needs to take this report on board." Mr Spratt also called for a benevolent fund to be set up for prison officers, similar to the one established for the RUC.
Mr Brooke said he hoped that special status for paramilitary prisoners would end once the Maze was closed. He said wings in jails should in future not be controlled by paramilitary inmates.