Angry prison officers are set to take action in frustration over having to handle mental patients who daily put their lives at risk.

Late last month Lorenzo Robinson, who is being held indefinitely at Westgate after being deemed mentally unstable, stabbed an officer in the back with a sharpened toothbrush.

Prison Officers Association chairman Craig Clarke told : ?Mr. Robinson has already threatened to kill all the officers. We take that threat seriously.

?We have to force him to take his medication.?

Robinson, a paranoid schizophrenic, is serving at Her Majesty?s pleasure after he stabbed tourist Scott Jable on Front Street three years ago.

?That could mean anything from a two-day sentence to a life sentence,? said Mr. Clarke. ?We don?t have the facilities to hold someone like him. We don?t have the specialised training.

?We don?t think it is fair for us to be warehousing mentally ill inmates because we are putting our lives at risk.?

Mr. Clarke said officers had suffered seven assaults this year ? some requiring hospital treatment and stitches.

?We are getting really tired of it ? it seems like it is open season on officers.?

He said Prison Commissioner Hubert Dean recently seemed to excuse the attack because it had been done by Robinson.

Mr. Clarke said the Mid Atlantic Wellness Institute, formerly St. Brendan?s hospital, should be looking after Robinson.

Recently, Government set up two hospital rooms in three of the units at Westgate but Mr. Clarke said it was paying lip service.

?We can?t give him 24-hour medical cover. The officers are not trained for that.

?Will it take blood on people?s hands or a death before people in positions (of power) realise they have to help these people?

?Don?t commit them to us. We are hired as Corrections Officers not as psychiatric nurses.?

He said although there were psychiatric nurses on staff they also had to cover the whole prison population.

The issue has not been put to the Commissioner, said Mr. Clarke who said officers were sick of always extending the olive branch and negotiating only for nothing to change.

?We will have to take some form of measures, we cannot have lip service. It isn?t working for us,? he said. ?We cannot let the service continue on this way without taking a stand.

?I will not like to divulge what that stand will be but it will be forthcoming unless they come to the negotiating table and be serious.?

Last night the Prison Commissioner agreed the prison was not really qualified to deal with mentally ill prisoners but the situation had gone on for years.

He said Government was looking at the possibility of building a mental health prison unit near Westgate but there is no time line.

Mr. Dean said: ?Mr. Clarke has not made these comments to me even though we meet on a regular basis. I find that quite surprising.?