Professional standards investigations

This week we have seen a lot of media over a small incident regarding a prison officer. 

I want to firstly make the point, the charge is over an unfounded allegation and this is what it should be treated as, as it goes through the court system. 

In light of this, I want to remind you all that the Department of Corrective Services’ professional standards division is searching for matters to investigate and care should be taken to continue to maintain the highest level of conduct.

Following an overhaul to the Department of Justice’s professional standards division last year, the 51-strong internal investigation team took up 792 cases last year.

They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for allegations from prisoners and we at WAPOU feel they are having difficulty finding things on prison officers.

I do not condone illegal behaviour but consider the recent investigation, which saw a prison officer arrested for allegedly consuming rice crackers from a seized property bag at Hakea Prison to be a witch hunt.

There is no way this should have been elevated to the stage where police became involved, it should have been handled on site and dealt with immediately