Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:02 pm on 15 November 2016.
They have the responsibility to pick up the pieces of their mess, primarily. The reduction by 25 per cent of front-line prison officers means that those that remain are overstretched, overwhelmed, and without support, and both prisoners and staff are being left in a vulnerable position. I was the local councillor when the Parc prison was built in my council ward, and the major problem the prison had was that it was understaffed, and the staff were undertrained. There were riots there on a regular basis, while staff from Swansea and Cardiff had to come in to assist the situation. One gentleman managed to escape by hanging on to the underneath of a lorry and he was never found. All those first years of the Parc prison’s operation were shambolic because of the fact that it was all being done on the cheap. Now, of course, it’s in a far better position, but it does show that, if the UK Government isn’t willing to invest in prison officers, then the result is chaos and vulnerable prisoners and vulnerable prison officers. They need to re-examine their plans.