May it be a quieter week at Long Lartin, the Category A prison where on Tuesday a disturbance was quelled and one officer hospitalised. On the same day we heard the more welcome news that HM Prison Service has broken into the top 100 graduate recruiters. Excellent! Let’s see its reputation vault higher over the barbed-wire of public suspicion. News that a friend or relative has signed up should bring admiration and congratulation. Especially if it’s at the sharp end as an officer.

Forget the word “warders”: they’re officers, as valuable as any in the military or the police, with a complex job. That they are not held in higher public respect is a scandal, for they are at best more than guards: mentors, educators,