Britain's biggest prison, HMP Berwyn in North Wales, opened its doors in 2017 and has acquired a reputation as the epicentre of a sex scandal engulfing the Prison Service.
Prison officers tells George Odling why prison sex scandals have soared and explain the tricks hardened criminals use to snare young female guards in this exclusive reportWhen Britain's biggest prison opened its doors in 2017, it was hailed as a £212 million model for the rehabilitation of offenders. But just seven years later, HMP Berwyn in North Wales has acquired a very different reputation — as the epicentre of a sex scandal engulfing the Prison Service.
This sexual impropriety is far from unique to HMP Berwyn in Wrexham, which calls cells 'rooms', blocks 'communities', and allows inmates to have their own phones and laptops. Last month two female prison workers appeared at Bolton Crown Court, accused of having simultaneous relationships with the same inmate. Aleesha Bates, 30, and Jodie Wilkes, 27, exchanged thousands of messages with a prisoner in an illicit love triangle at HMP Buckley Hall, Rochdale.
Both women admitted misconduct in a public office, with Bates sentenced to two years and eight months in prison and Wilkes handed a 12-month sentence, suspended for two years. To an outsider, it's hard to understand what drives an officer to risk an affair with an inmate, knowing they could lose everything if they are caught. So what exactly is going on behind prison walls?
It was only in the 1980s that cross-sex postings began to be advertised. Since then the acceleration in numbers of women entering the prison service has been steep; some 40 per cent of public sector prison staff are now said to be female.'When I joined, I thought: 'This is going to be my career for the next 30 years.
'Previously many officers in the tough prisons were ex-Armed Forces, who had a lot of real-life experience and were not easily intimidated,' says Officer A, who left the system seven years ago after ten years working in the north-east of England. Vanessa, author of The Governor: My Life inside Britain's Most Notorious Prisons, says there are also failings in training, vetting procedures and a lack of mentors.
And while guards are reportedly struggling to keep inmates under control, the inmates keep a keen eye on the guards for vulnerabilities they may be able to exploit, explains Officer B. 'The squeeze will begin. The next thing is they will ask 'can you bring this in for me' and the whole thing escalates from there.'
Advertisement 'The cupboards, maybe, if they had someone to keep watch and give a signal if there was someone coming. Even in a cell, if they were happy to live dangerously. Officer A, meanwhile, recalls a colleague being caught committing sexual acts with an inmate in a prison's 'methadone room' — a medical room where recovering addicts would receive treatment.
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