VITAL prison reforms are facing crisis, with recruitment and training failures seeing just 16 per cent of new officers from the Catholic community - despite aims of 'Patten-style' parity.
Fifteen years after devolution was to have ushered in reform of Northern Ireland's key institutions, Catholics in the service number just 11.6 per cent
New recruits are reporting being "thrown" onto command of landings, without the specialist training agreed by prison chiefs following a comprehensive review of the service's failures by a team led by former HM chief inspector of prisons Dame Anne Owers.
Instead, they are learning "on the job" from existing staff.
The review followed a series of damning inspection reports which included findings that conditions in Northern Ireland's only high security prison were putting inmates lives at risk.
However, while justice minister David Ford has pushed on with systemic changes for prisoner care, critics claim those reforms are being fatally undermined by failure to address staffing issues.
Both the Prison Review Oversight Group (PROG) and the Prison Officers Association (FOA) warn the service faces losing already disillusioned new recruits "once the economic climate picks up".
PROG member Professor Monica McWilliams said rota patterns of 11 working days without a break and graduates being paid just £17,000 to £18,000 with no "career pathway" to promotion are damaging morale.
Sixty-five staff are holding temporary promotions, with no senior officer progression since 2000.
A promotion board is expected in October.
The starting salary for new custody officers was to have risen to £27,000 with successful completion
of training, but there have been delays in the programme's delivery.
"The reality is that they will never become an offender supervisor," POA spokesman Finlay Spratt said.
Prison Service has already deployed 309 new officers.
Prof McWilliams, of the University of Ulster's Transitional Justice Institute, said there remain "insufficient number of Catholics" due to delays in community engagement.
"They started to do more outreach but by that time [prison officer David Black] had been killed and there is now a chill factor amongst young Catholics," she said.
A Prison Service spokesman said it is "fully aware of the under representation of Catholics in its workforce and is engaged in a programme of community engagement to promote a positive image of the service as an equal opportunity employer".
Prof McWilliams also said the recent tendering of a contract for university-level staff training "should have happened a year ago".
An executive spokesman confirmed the Accreditation for the Certificate of Competence for Prison Custody Officers tender "has issued".
The service is also under fire for "wasting £150,000 of taxpayers money" - without a tendering process - on two profilers from England, only to have the exercise repeated by existing staff.
Mr Spratt told the Justice Committee: "Our own profilers, who are employed by the Prison Service and who should have done the job from day one, are now doing it after £150,000 had been paid out."
He said instead of supporting prisoners, they are being locked up "more than has ever happened".
"That is the sum total of the reform of the Northern Ireland Prison Service," he said.
Mr Spratt branded the new target operating model (TOM) "actually worse" than the system it replaced.
Committee members own "disturbing" visit to Magilligan revealed TOM had led to a single female prison officer being placed "in danger" on duty in a sex offenders wing where inmates had keys to their own cells.
Chairman Paul Givan said "a number of new recruits" told him they were "genuinely concerned about their safety".
Mr Spratt said the service "has been guilty of... throwing all those young ones onto the landings on their own", in some cases with three female new recruits managing up to 50 male prisoners.
He said TOM sees inmates locked in their cells at weekends from 5.30 pm.
"Magilligan is just a powder keg because people lie about doing nothing," Mr Spratt said.