What is the most outrageous crime in modern Britain?
For many, it will be the rape gangs scandal. Yet when Katie Lam MP bought up the issue of Pakistani rape gangs in particular in a debate about child abuse in the Commons last week, it seemed not everyone agreed. Lib Dem MP Tessa Munt gave a vituperative response, claiming that the mention of “this stuff” — the mass, systematised, targeted rape of thousands of vulnerable women along ethnic lines, and the institutional failures and complicity of the British state — made her “blood boil” — not, as Madeline Grant noted, the fact that it happened.
Liberal progressivism depends on the idea of the blank slate. The universal sameness of the human, in this model, means that individuals and groups are interchangeable across time, space, and function. But the often brutal asymmetries of groups and individuals in the real world challenge the fundamental assumption. In order to counteract this unwelcome intrusion of reality, modern progressivism has developed a levelling impulse, which works towards a system of relentless horizontalism that flattens difference.
Where difference cannot be flattened, those committed to egalitarianism instead attempt to suppress the noticing of difference. For them, the greatest crimes are not acts of violence or injustice, but the recognition of asymmetry. To people like Munt, it is intolerable to recognise disparities that resist integration into the smooth, horizontal order of liberal modernity.
It’s time for an honest conversation about women in the prison service
But the dream of equality is not merely flawed, it is delusional. It produces a fragile architecture that is constantly cracking under the weight of its own denial of reality. As a result, our politics faces a paralysing lag in judgement; even when differences are obvious, action must be deferred until evidence has accumulated far beyond reasonable doubt. Even then, the action must be levelling; hence Prevent cannot focus resources on a specific, single outsized terror threat; no particular ethnicity can be identified when discussing child rape gangs; no specific sexual differences can be identified when considering divergent employment outcomes.
On this last specific point, though, we may be reaching the limits of insurmountable deniability. It’s time for an honest conversation about women in the prison service.
According to the Ministry of Justice, 2024 saw a 28 per cent increase in the number of prison officers dismissed for misconduct. In the previous four years, a record 40 female officers have been dismissed for forming relationships with male inmates in prisons across England and Wales — more than triple the number recorded between 2017–18 and 2019–20, when just nine officers were sacked for similar offences. Just one singular male officer was dismissed, and three same-sex cases were reported.
The scandals have started gaining significant public attention, both for the lurid detail and the shocking collapse in the prison service it seems to suggest.
At HMP Berwyn, the UK’s largest male prison, 18 female officers have been fired or have resigned over relationships with inmates. A female officer at HMP Dovegate was sentenced to three years in prison after falling in love with an inmate, maintaining contact after his transfer to an open prison, assisting in his escape, and harbouring him while he was on the run. Another, at HMP Woodhill, formed relationships with three inmates on phones she smuggled into the prison for that express purpose. At HMP Five Wells, an officer received a nine-month suspended sentence after forming a relationship with a prisoner serving ten and a half years for armed robbery; she later became pregnant with his child. At HMP The Mount in Rugby, a 42-year-old officer was convicted by a jury after exchanging over 4,000 text messages and 90 voice calls with an inmate. A 19-year-old officer at HMP Woodhill received a suspended sentence after admitting to kissing and engaging in sexual contact with a prisoner, including an encounter in a cleaning cupboard. Meanwhile, a 28-year-old officer at HMP Holme House admitted smuggling codeine for an inmate she was involved with. 30-year-old officer Linda De Sousa Abreu pleaded guilty to misconduct after a video went viral showing her in a sexual encounter with a convict at Wandsworth Prison. Previous cases include Aleesha Bates, 29, and Jodie Wilkes, 27, who were both convicted after a three-way affair with a prisoner at HMP Buckley Hall in Rochdale. Reports have also surfaced of Albanian gangsters bragging online about paying up to £2,000 for sex with junior female prison staff.
Some of the behavioural incentives causing problems in the prison service are shared by both genders; low pay, for instance, makes officers susceptible to lucrative offers of smuggling contraband in – and occasionally dealing themselves. Corruption within prisons is now “a more serious issue than ever before” according to John Podmore, former head of the prison service’s Corruption Prevention Unit. This is down to “a perfect storm of young inexperienced staff with poor vetting and inadequate training being thrown into a dystopian environment, where violence and organised crime dominate a failing prison system.”
In such conditions, young and inexperienced staff can be especially susceptible to manipulation
Staffing pressures have also led to standards dropping. No specific qualifications are needed to become a prison officer in England and Wales, and new recruits are given a 10-day induction, which includes finding out about prison life and being shown basic security processes. This is followed by a seven-week training programme, during which trainees are taught how to look after people in custody and de-escalate challenging situations. There are also selection problems; while applicants are subject to security vetting, this often fails to catch obvious red flags. Linda De Sousa Abreu, for instance, had an active OnlyFans account and had previously appeared on Open House, a Channel 4 programme about swingers.
Prison wings are frequently staffed by just a few officers responsible for hundreds of inmates, many of whom lack experience. Half of all frontline prison officers have been in the role for four years or less, with over 34 per cent serving for no more than a year. In such conditions, young and inexperienced staff can be especially susceptible to manipulation.
There is undoubtedly sexual abuse perpetrated by male prison officers, but the nature of the offences is more predatory; an example is the male prison officer at HMP Low Newton who was jailed after engaging in sex acts with 12 separate female prisoners. By contrast, many of the stories featuring female police officers seem to involve them forming relationships with inmates.
It seems that the current cohort of female prison officers is particularly susceptible to emotional manipulation. The chair of the Prison Officers’ Association has told The Mirror that the “wrong kind of women” were being hired. “Staff being recruited don’t have face-to-face interviews… a lot of people getting these jobs don’t have enough life experience and are susceptible to conditioning from prisoners.” Anecdotally, almost all of the women involved in the stories I’ve detailed in this article appeared to be young, either in their twenties or very early thirties.
One possible psychological explanation for the divergence between male and female officers may be underlying gender differences in empathic understanding. Research suggests that women exhibit higher levels of empathy and emotional responsiveness than men. This heightened emotional engagement can make female officers more receptive to inmates’ emotional appeals, meaning manipulative inmates can exploit by presenting themselves as victims or misunderstood individuals in need of care or connection.
Additionally, younger women are more inclined to seek emotional validation and relationships — especially in high-stress, isolating environments like prisons. If institutional support is lacking, and if their authority is routinely undermined or challenged, the emotional connection offered by an inmate, however disingenuous, may appear comforting or even flattering. Men, by contrast, may be less likely to interpret or respond to emotional engagement in this way, and more likely to maintain emotional detachment as a coping mechanism in a custodial setting.
There is also the role of hybristophilia — the sexual or romantic attraction to individuals who have committed violent crimes. The more familiar form is passive hybristophilia, where individuals are drawn to criminals without becoming involved in their offences (the trope of women falling in love with serial killers) but there is also an active form, known as aggressive hybristophilia, in which people not only attracted to criminals, but become an active participant in their crimes.
The role of prison officer has become an increasingly high-turnover job that is performed under great pressure, by too few staff, who are poorly supported with weak guardrails. Throwing in new recruits to the challenging environment of a prison with minimal experience, training isn’t a recipe for success regardless of the officer’s gender. But the truth remains; people are not blank slates. The fragile architecture of our prisons no longer cracks, but collapses, under the weight of the denial of reality. The current dire state of the prison estate preys on emotional instincts that are far more prevalent in women, and continuing to throw new recruits into the system will only increase the number that are exploited; first the screws are bent, and then we punish them.
