Jayden Pring sentenced for assaults on officers at Barwon Prison

An inmate at Barwon Prison tried to fight off multiple prison officers while being pepper sprayed and stabbed one with a pen.

Jayden Pring. Photo: Facebook

A troubled inmate at Barwon Prison has fronted court after assaulting prison officers.

Jayden Pring, 22, faced the Geelong Magistrates Court on Tuesday via video link and pleaded guilty to charges related to assaulting emergency workers in two incidents.

He was sentenced to 120 days in jail, to run concurrently with his current sentence.

The Ballarat man was jailed in February 2022 for a maximum of four years, with a non-parole period of one year.

Police prosecutor Leading Senior Constable David Vanderpol told the court that on May 13 last year, three prison officers were tasked with moving Pring back to his cell.

Pring initially appeared “non-threatening”, the court heard, but when he was told he was to be taken back to his cell, he became aggressive and agitated.

Pring “adopted a boxer’s stance” and had a pen in his hand.

Two of the officers wrestled him to the ground, while the third pepper-sprayed him.

He was handcuffed as other prison officers arrived to help restrain him.

At some point during the scuffle, Pring stabbed one of the officers in the shoulder, resulting in a “puncture wound”.

On July 16, Pring became aggressive after he was asked about a “crushed up pill”, telling an officer to “come into (his) cell” and calling the man a “dog”, before hitting him with a clenched fist in the left side of his head causing redness and swelling.

Pring’s lawyer, Tony Danos, told the court Pring had an “unstable and traumatic” childhood, left school after grade two and “followed his siblings and parents into using drugs from an early age”.

He began using cannabis at age seven and meth at 13, the court heard.

He said Pring clearly lacked impulse control and had diagnoses of an intellectual disability, Asperger’s syndrome, an acquired brain injury (ABI) and a speech impediment.

Mr Danos said Pring’s prospects of rehabilitation were not yet extinguished, now that he had an NDIS plan, which would hopefully lead to accommodation in Melbourne upon his eventual release.

“There is a reason for him not to go back to Ballarat, not to fall into the same cycle as before,” Mr Danos said.

“The major hope is that the NDIS can provide the support that he needs to not reoffend.”

Constable Vanderpol highlighted the victims were “just doing their job” and asked the court to extend his sentence.

Magistrate Simon Guthrie said Pring was at risk of institutionalisation at the age of 22.

He noted that attacks on prison officers affected not just the officers involved, but their colleagues.

“These emergency workers are doing what they’re expected to do,” he told Pring.

“I don’t know whether you appreciate the psychological impact and the compounding impact this has.”

Mr Guthrie opted to have the sentence run concurrently and said but for the plea it would have been 180 days and would accumulate, meaning he’d face “an extra six months” of prison.

Originally published as Jayden Pring sentenced for assaults on officers at Barwon Prison