The Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion is chastis­ing act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe for what they call his con­tin­ued si­lence dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, say­ing morale among of­fi­cers is ex­treme­ly low.

In a Face­book post, the As­so­ci­a­tion said it had been nine days since the SOE was de­clared, and yet of­fi­cers had re­ceived no com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the head of the Prison Ser­vice. “Your si­lence is deaf­en­ing, sir,” it said.

The As­so­ci­a­tion al­so took aim at what it de­scribed as “sen­sa­tion­al claims” be­ing made about life be­hind bars, par­tic­u­lar­ly the sug­ges­tion that a pris­on­er at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison had ac­cess to a 65-inch tele­vi­sion.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that tele­vi­sions do ex­ist with­in some prison fa­cil­i­ties, the union said they form part of a struc­tured re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion frame­work and were in­stalled with the Com­mis­sion­er’s ex­press ap­proval. “No pris­on­er sim­ply strolls in­to an elec­tron­ics store and re­turns with the lat­est home-the­atre set­up,” the union wrote, warn­ing that such nar­ra­tives dis­tract from chron­ic un­der-re­sourc­ing and dan­ger­ous work­ing con­di­tions with­in the prison sys­tem.

But Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge is not back­ing down. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, Sturge in­sist­ed he had seen im­age-based ev­i­dence sup­port­ing the claim. “Well, I have an im­age that would dis­prove that. But in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, it is not some­thing I can share.”

He ques­tioned why tele­vi­sions would be per­mit­ted in­side in­di­vid­ual cells in­stead of mon­i­tored com­mu­nal ar­eas, where ac­cess can be more tight­ly con­trolled. “In a cell, the in­mate has ac­cess to it at all hours and it’s im­pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor,” he said.

Sturge al­so claimed that in­mates not on­ly have ac­cess to smart TVs—but al­so to in­ter­net. He sug­gest­ed that gam­ing plat­forms like Minecraft and Roblox can be ex­ploit­ed for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, say­ing this pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant risk if left unchecked.

He blamed the for­mer gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to block these com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, say­ing the re­fusal to ful­ly ac­ti­vate jam­mers stemmed from a pref­er­ence for col­lect­ing in­tel­li­gence which some­times caused harm to oc­cur. “You have to make a de­ci­sion what you want more—whether you want ev­i­dence or in­tel at the cost of hu­man life.”

He added that of­fi­cers some­times re­sist jam­mers be­cause they too want phone ac­cess while on du­ty. “The prison of­fi­cers com­plain if you turn on the jam­mers, then they are al­so af­fect­ed. They can­not com­mu­ni­cate with loved ones.”

Still, the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion main­tains that it is un­help­ful for se­nior of­fi­cials to feed pub­lic out­rage with in­com­plete ac­counts.

“Per­haps it is eas­i­er to con­jure im­ages of lux­u­ry liv­ing be­hind bars than to con­front the harsh re­al­i­ty of the chron­ic ne­glect and re­source star­va­tion that plague the Prison Ser­vice,” it wrote. “Of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to work in fa­cil­i­ties where the most ba­sic tools, in­fra­struc­ture, and sup­port are glar­ing­ly ab­sent.”

The As­so­ci­a­tion again in­vit­ed the Min­is­ter to meet di­rect­ly with of­fi­cers. “A mean­ing­ful di­a­logue may not make the evening head­lines, but it would cer­tain­ly do more for the safe­ty and fu­ture of our coun­try than tales of 65-inch tele­vi­sions.”