From Bill Millar, Governor.
I WISH to express concern and disappointment at the JEP’s misleading headline on Tuesday (JEP, 15 Jun) and inaccuracies in the associated article. This followed an interview related to the Prison Service’s annual report for 2009.

In reality, 2009 was an excellent year for the Prison Service and the annual report details massive improvements in the infra-structure of the prison and in the prison regime.

This was not achieved without significant investment by the States of Jersey and a lot of hard work on the part of prison staff.

However, the JEP chose to focus on the details related to prisoner misconducts and, specifically, prisoners being found to be in possession of a mobile phone. No issue with that provided it is fairly and accurately presented.

In this regard, Tuesday’s article was seriously flawed. The headline ‘Prison staff in smuggling ring?’ and the comment that ‘specialist metal detecting equipment has been brought in at La Moye amid fears that corrupt staff could be smuggling in mobile phones’ is inaccurate and will have left many of your readers with unnecessary concerns about prison staff.

To get the facts right, the BOSS metal detector has been in use for about four years and it was introduced to carry out security checks on prisoners who work in the community on their return to the prison.

It has never been used on staff. When asked if staff could be bringing in mobile phones, I did state that I could not rule this out as a possibility.

However, this is grossly overstated in the JEP’s reporting of this issue. The vast majority of staff at La Moye prison are honest, hard working, dedicated professionals. Their integrity isn’t in doubt and I am very proud of their achievements.

On another point of accuracy, the article stated that prison chiefs had overspent by £218k.

It failed to report that the overspend in revenue was agreed in advance and offset by funds transferred from capital projects where revenue costs had been miscoded.
The prison expenditure was in fact within a fraction of a percent of approved funding.