AN inmate who attacked an experienced prison officer in frustration after asking to have a cellmate moved, has earned a further two-year jail sentence.

Ben Skinner spoke to the senior officer on D-Wing at Durham Prison, on January 5, complaining he was having to share his cell with another inmate.

Durham Crown Court heard that he left the staff office, “clearly unhappy”, at the response he received.

Tamara Pawson, prosecuting, said he walked onto a landing, during what was an association period, picked up a snooker cue and ran back to the staff office, shouting aggressively.

He struck the officer on the back and a violent struggle then followed with both ending up on the floor.

The cue snapped as the officer tried to take it from Skinner, who was finally detained and taken to a segregation area.

He was searched and found to be carrying an adapted, sharpened piece of wood inside his trouser leg.

When he was later interviewed he said he realised he could have just walked away and was, “sorry for his actions”.

He claimed to have made the adapted weapon several months earlier, “for protection”.

Miss Pawson said the 60-year-old officer suffered abrasions and scars to his chest wall, forearm and back, all scar tissue injuries which healed within a month, but suffered much longer term mental problems, including flashbacks, for which he has received counselling.

She added that after 32 years as a prison officer he is now wary of going back onto a wing.

Twenty-five-year-old Skinner, formerly of Wallsend, North Tyneside, admitted assault causing actual bodily harm and possession of an unauthorised offensive weapon in custody.

The court heard that Skinner’s lengthy list of previous offences includes incidents of violence and anti-social behaviour from his youth, culminating in him being jailed for six years for aggravated burglary, at Newcastle Crown Court, in 2014.

Mark Harrison, mitigating, said Skinner was serving that sentence at the time of the offence and, with prison discipline added, was not due to have been released, on licence, until the end of January next year.

Mr Harrison said although he was carrying the adapted piece of wood on him, Skinner never produced it during the struggle, and merely picked up the snooker cue in anger as he was passing a table on leaving the staff office.

“Following the attack he went into immediate segregation and spent a long period, ‘in the block’, as it is termed in prison-speak, as a consequence of his behaviour,” added Mr Harrison.

Jailing him for two years, Recorder Christopher Knox said, judging by his record, Skinner was a “feral youth”, still capable of displaying angry outbursts of uncontrolled violence into his mid-20s.