For­mer pris­ons com­mis­sion­er Ger­ard Wil­son says while there may be some mer­it for the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­clare a State of Emer­gency (SoE) to com­bat pow­er­ful un­der­world fig­ures, it should main­tain con­sis­tent pres­sure on these crim­i­nals on a more con­sis­tent ba­sis.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment af­ter the lat­est SoE was de­clared yes­ter­day, Wil­son, who served as prison com­mis­sion­er from 2017-2020, said while he has no prob­lem with the steps be­ing tak­en to dis­rupt gang net­works in prison through the SoE, more ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems must be rolled out more thor­ough­ly for the best re­sults.

He said such an ur­gent de­vel­op­ment war­rant­ed a se­ri­ous se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse.