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Mike Rolfe has hit out at Justice Secretary David Lammy for blaming the previous Conservative Government for the accidental release of Epping hotel migrant Hadush Kebatu.Speaking to GB News, the General Secretary of the Criminal Justice Workers Union criticised Labour for being "slow to react" to issues within the prison system and making "rash policy decisions".FULL STORY HERE.
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0:00
I don't think it's that simple
0:01
I think we need to wait for the inquiry to absolutely understand what went wrong. But I don't think blaming the previous Conservative government is the foolproof either
0:11
I think Labour have been really slow to react since they've taken power
0:16
They did inherit a few issues. There's no denying that. I'm sure the Conservatives would admit that themselves in terms of prison capacity
0:23
and other issues that are going on in the estate. But certainly all we've seen from Labour since they've come into power is just making rash decisions around sentencing, releasing prisoners early and bringing new schemes in to try and reduce the prison population
0:40
and that really does also focus in on foreign national which is where this case becomes
0:45
particularly complex in that Labour have moved the goalpost quite a few times since they've
0:50
come into power around at what point a foreign national prisoner is entitled for his early release which is before his sentence would actually come to a conditional release and they tampered with that and that made the situation really confusing This is a service that had a lack of investment there been no technology for sentence calculations they
1:10
still being done manually on a piece of paper by basic grade admin staff. This is a service that
1:17
has absolutely not been looked at. It's crises like this that then make people react. But
1:25
But the reaction here, what has happened, is they've just thrown in another tier, another layer of bureaucracy that doesn't really actually solve the problem
1:33
It's not really looking at the issue in the backroom staffing numbers, why people don't want to work in prisons anymore
1:39
why, you know, that pride in the service is falling apart. And actually, you know, it is becoming embarrassing
1:45
And that's really sad to see for a lot of prison staff that worked in the service for, you know, most of their career really put a hard shift in
1:52
want to protect the public, really care about how this impacts the public
1:55
This is embarrassing to them as well They don want to see this happen They don want to see their colleagues make mistakes But the government have created an environment that allows for these mistakes to happen by just making it impossible to do the job they doing
2:08
But when you say it's impossible to do the job they're doing
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surely somebody can just quite simply complete the paperwork so that Cabotu that we're looking at on the screen here
2:21
rather than being released, he was going... Wasn't he meant to be being moved from the prison to start the deportation process
2:33
And he accidentally got released. Is that what was happening? So is this therefore two departments working together and the left hand isn't talking to the right hand
2:43
Well, it's even more complex than that, Bev. You've got the Home Office as well that comes into this
2:47
So prisoners that are in a remand prison like H&P Chelmsford, a lot of those prisoners will be
2:54
on normal determinant sentences. There be the remand prisoners that are going to court whilst their court appearances take place And then on top of that you got detainees people who finished their sentence to a foreign national that are waiting deportation but you also got your prisoners that come to end of sentence
3:09
Now, if the Home Office, for example, hadn't issued the paperwork to say
3:13
that this guy needed to remain in detention and the prison hadn't received that
3:17
the prison may have looked for that and said, well, we've not received this. We're at risk of holding this guy illegally
3:26
You know, his time has expired. we are due to release him. And it could be a simple error in that the paperwork never came from the Home Office
3:33
For example, the Home Office are meant to give the prison 30 days notification
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of anyone that's to remain on detention following the conditional release date
3:43
But quite regularly, because the Home Office is such a shambles as well
3:47
what's happening is the paperwork isn't coming through on time, and it's sometimes not coming through to the day of release
3:53
Now, how can anyone in that environment operate efficiently and, you know, have effective communication in order not to make these mistakes
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