00:00Another attack at another high security jail. A prison officer was stabbed by an
00:07inmate at HMP Longlarton in Worcestershire. They're in a stable condition but required
00:12emergency treatment after being airlifted to hospital. It's raised fresh questions about
00:18the safety of prison staff. What we're seeing in violence against staff in the moment is an
00:22escalation. The particular nature of some of these events is particularly concerning,
00:26but this comes against the backdrop of rising violence in prisons for some years.
00:31Sources say that the knife used in the attack wasn't made in prison,
00:35with suggestions that a drone could have transported it in.
00:39An inspection report of Longlarton in January described the incursion of drones as an increasingly
00:44critical problem, a threat that was unsettling for staff. It's more than a one-pronged approach that
00:52is going to stop the drones. You need physical barriers, you need technology,
00:58and of course that costs money. I think if something's not done, we could well see the
01:06murder of a prison officer. Attacks on prison staff are becoming more and more common. There was a 15%
01:13rise in the year to December. The government have commissioned a series of reviews to consider
01:17greater protections for prison officers, but this latest attack is the third that we know about
01:23in a category A prison in less than two months. In April, Hashem Abedi, who was jailed for plotting
01:30the Manchester Arena bombing, allegedly assaulted prison officers with hot cooking oil and a homemade
01:35weapon. The following month at Belmarsh prison, the Southport killer Axel Rudakabana is accused of
01:41throwing boiling hot water over an officer through his cell door. Weeks later and this attack at Longlarton,
01:47with a 25-year-old prison officer sustaining serious injuries. The government say that the safety of
01:53frontline staff in prisons is their number one priority, but if weapons are making their way into
01:59jail from the outside, violence becomes even more difficult to contain. Molly Malone, Sky News.
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