A gang member may have become a prison officer in Scotland, a union leader has claimed.
The assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association in Scotland, Phil Fairlie, believes a gang member successfully became a prison officer before quitting when suspecting he had been found out.
Fairlie (pictured) told 1919 Magazine: “We’ve got a belief that it happened. We’re not sure whether they’ve been successful in it or not. We think there might have been somebody employed who left the organisation when concerns were uncovered.”
He declined to name the prison involved but said organised crime gangs attempting to infiltrate the prison service is a growing problem.
He raised the issue when giving evidence to Holyrood’s justice committee.
The Scottish Prison Service insisted it has “robust procedures around the recruitment of new staff”.
But Fairlie told MSPs: “One of our biggest concerns is that organised crime gangs go to the extent of having their own people apply to join the prison service so that they get recruited into the service and are then on the inside.
“We could help to tackle that during the recruitment process, through the security checks that are done on staff before they come in and the background checks on who is coming into the organisation.”
He added: “There is the potential for people to get into the organisation on behalf of organised crime gangs through the recruitment process that we have at the moment. That needs to be looked at.”
Speaking to 1919, Fairlie called for recruitment reform to respond to the rising gang threat.
He said prison staff are “seeing and experiencing much more violence than we used to”.
Several prison staff cars have been set on fire in car parks, he said, and some staff members have been moved into safe houses for weeks at a time due to threats from gangs.
He added: “The recruitment process has to respond to the change in environment we’ve got within our prisons – the number of high-up members of organised crime gangs who are coming in and operating as they do on the outside.
“There is the potential for people to get into the organisation on behalf of organised crime gangs through the recruitment process that we have at the moment”
Phil Fairlie, Prison Officers’ Association Scotland
“The environment is different from pre-Covid and recruitment and training has to catch up with that – and quickly.”
Fairlie called for a return to interviewing candidates in person inside a prison before making any job offer.
He said: “Since Covid the prison service has started doing interviews for the job online.
“I don’t think that’s right for the individual applying. They are not coming to a prison. The first time they are in a prison is when they get the job and they come in to start work.
“The prison environment is completely unique. Candidates are not going to get any sense of that from a Teams interview.”
He said in-person interviews in jail would also help enable staff to recognise any candidates with concerning links.
Fairlie said some people are being “coached in the background” during the online interviews and the process means “we are not absolutely certain about who we are interviewing and who we are giving a job to”.
He said in a small number of cases background checks on candidates completed after they have started work have flagged concerns.
Other applicants have been turned down when checks revealed possible links to organised crime.
He called for these checks to be finalised before a candidate starts work in a prison.
“With the environment that’s being created by organised crime gangs in prison, we need to be sure we’re bringing in the right people who are capable of dealing with that,” he added.
“We need to be certain we’re not letting people slip through the net, which is entirely possible.”
A Scottish Prison Service spokesperson said: “We have robust procedures around the recruitment of new staff, including identifying previous criminal convictions.
“Even after these checks we use all information available to us to ensure all those working in our establishments meet the high standards expected.”