United Workers Union NT Secretary Erina Early says it’s highly likely prison staff will walk off the job in the next 48 hours due to safety concerns amid a raft of emergency actions being taken by the Corrections Department to ease pressure on NT jails.

She told Katie Woolf many fear a riot or large-scale incident is imminent, with prisoners being relocated from Alice Springs to Darwin Corrections Centre and not enough officers to deal with the numbers of inmates.

Ms Early is calling for middle managers to be deployed into prisons to help ease the pressure on corrections officers.

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