Inspire inmates, prison officers told

AN ANGLICAN PRIEST has urged prison officers to use their Christian principles to inspire inmates to be better citizens.

Reverend Trevor O’Neale, rector of St Philip’s Parish Church, said yesterday that prison officers had a moral duty to do more than just bring discipline to the life of people who had
run afoul of the law.

Prison officers’ lives and the code by which they lived should be “the light for those who are in darkness”, he said. For these officers, prison should represent “a recreating, a renewal, bringing a life back to usefulness”.

O’Neale indicated that officers’ greatest satisfaction from the job needed to be more than the pay. He said they should strive to positively influence at least one inmate daily about what was necessary “to live in our society”.

The priest was addressing management and staff of Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds, during a special service to mark the seventh anniversary of Dodds and the 159th of the prison service. (TY)