The criteria for hiring staff at HMP Berwyn have fallen to a very low bar due to staff shortages for a horrible, low-paid job that no one wants. So, the calibre of staff working is very low. Staff that wouldn’t be hired to stock Tesco shelves are being hired as prison workers which means they bring extremely low competencies and personal bias into the workplace.
This is a complex one.
On the one hand, people should be able to speak their native language freely, even convicted criminals, as a fundamental right.
But on the other hand… in an ideal world wardens need to be able to maintain control of their prisons and part of the magic formula is guards being able to both facilitate communication with their inmates and also understand clearly what the inmates are saying in overheard conversations.
Otherwise you could have inmates publicly intimidating one another in front of guards, openly plotting disorder or violence with wardens none the wiser, or running mini drug empires from their cells without fear of reprisal.
(I mean, I know that all happens in UK jails as a matter of routine, it doesn’t invalidate my point though).
Part of the solution here could be to make Welsh mandatory training for staff posted to Welsh prisons like Berwyn. But that’s not a magic bullet – it takes time and effort to proficiently learn a new language beyond a handful of token phrases and I find it unlikely that underpaid and overworked prison staff would relish doing it.
Also it has to be said here, but it’s worth bearing in mind that these particular accusations of hostility towards the Welsh language might be somewhat exaggerated given that they are coming *from convicted criminals*, a cohort who aren’t usually associated with integrity and honesty.
Staff standards are clearly rock bottom. Mandatory Cymraeg courses should be a requirement if someone doesn’t already speak it
The English, telling Welsh people to not speak their own language? Really?!
Now there’s a first! /s
Problem is the mass amount of gobshite dossers in north wales that get sent to there that don’t/can’t talk any form of Welsh properly.
I’ve had a couple mates get sent there and they’ve never come across any Welsh speakers.
Worked there when it opened, Welsh was actually promoted heavily at the time. But the insane levels of miss management saw anyone decent leave pretty fast. There are a lot of languages spoke there, fuck on my wing English was barely spoken from con to con (Mainly Urdu) . So I’m pretty confident this con is chatting rubbish / over exaggerating.
Well they have had since 1284 to learn English. They should really be fluent by now .
With very few exceptions, large scale institutions run on command-and-control have historically been hostile to the speaking of Welsh. The HMP Berwyn situation mirrors the insistence on English in the some of the coalmines, or the victimisation of Breton speakers in the French army during the 1st and 2nd World Wars.
I feel like my opinion about this depends on the rest of the rules around language. If every prisoner is required to only speak English regardless of their proficiency and/or preference, then it’s shit but it’s fair shit. If other languages aren’t treated the same then that’s not cool at all.
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The criteria for hiring staff at HMP Berwyn have fallen to a very low bar due to staff shortages for a horrible, low-paid job that no one wants. So, the calibre of staff working is very low. Staff that wouldn’t be hired to stock Tesco shelves are being hired as prison workers which means they bring extremely low competencies and personal bias into the workplace.
This is a complex one.
On the one hand, people should be able to speak their native language freely, even convicted criminals, as a fundamental right.
But on the other hand… in an ideal world wardens need to be able to maintain control of their prisons and part of the magic formula is guards being able to both facilitate communication with their inmates and also understand clearly what the inmates are saying in overheard conversations.
Otherwise you could have inmates publicly intimidating one another in front of guards, openly plotting disorder or violence with wardens none the wiser, or running mini drug empires from their cells without fear of reprisal.
(I mean, I know that all happens in UK jails as a matter of routine, it doesn’t invalidate my point though).
Part of the solution here could be to make Welsh mandatory training for staff posted to Welsh prisons like Berwyn. But that’s not a magic bullet – it takes time and effort to proficiently learn a new language beyond a handful of token phrases and I find it unlikely that underpaid and overworked prison staff would relish doing it.
Also it has to be said here, but it’s worth bearing in mind that these particular accusations of hostility towards the Welsh language might be somewhat exaggerated given that they are coming *from convicted criminals*, a cohort who aren’t usually associated with integrity and honesty.
Staff standards are clearly rock bottom. Mandatory Cymraeg courses should be a requirement if someone doesn’t already speak it
The English, telling Welsh people to not speak their own language? Really?!
Now there’s a first! /s
Problem is the mass amount of gobshite dossers in north wales that get sent to there that don’t/can’t talk any form of Welsh properly.
I’ve had a couple mates get sent there and they’ve never come across any Welsh speakers.
Worked there when it opened, Welsh was actually promoted heavily at the time. But the insane levels of miss management saw anyone decent leave pretty fast. There are a lot of languages spoke there, fuck on my wing English was barely spoken from con to con (Mainly Urdu) . So I’m pretty confident this con is chatting rubbish / over exaggerating.
Well they have had since 1284 to learn English. They should really be fluent by now .
With very few exceptions, large scale institutions run on command-and-control have historically been hostile to the speaking of Welsh. The HMP Berwyn situation mirrors the insistence on English in the some of the coalmines, or the victimisation of Breton speakers in the French army during the 1st and 2nd World Wars.
I feel like my opinion about this depends on the rest of the rules around language. If every prisoner is required to only speak English regardless of their proficiency and/or preference, then it’s shit but it’s fair shit. If other languages aren’t treated the same then that’s not cool at all.
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