WHEN I look at the state of the UK prison service today, it’s hardly surprising standards have deteriorated beyond recognition from the 27 years I spent guarding Britain’s most dangerous criminals.
Take the case of the OnlyFans ‘model’ – who also appeared on an orgy-packed TV reality show about swingers – hired to work at one of the country’s most notorious jails.
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Surprise surprise, she bedded a lag – and went viral online after their raunchy encounter was filmed.
But every few weeks now I’m reading a new story about a female guard having sex with a prisoner.
This week, prison officer Megan Breen dodged jail after pleading guilty to an affair with a lag between February and May 2022 while she worked in two different jails in Wales.
She had sex with the convicted drug dealer in a hotel room after travelling 175 miles to meet him in Liverpool when he was on home release, and exchanging hundreds of messages.
Now an expectant mother, Breen was handed a 10 month suspended sentence, 15 days rehabilitation requirement and was ordered to pay £500 costs at £50 per month.
The 23-year-old is far from alone. The case of the aforementioned OnlyFans camgirl-turned-Wandsworth prison officer, Linda de Sousa Abreu, who was jailed 15 months in January for romping with an inmate, was certainly one of the more outrageous.
In my opinion, poor staff retention rates, little training, low wages and failing standards have led to this mess.
A quick background Google check would have revealed de Sousa Abreu, 30, who appeared on Channel 4’s Open House: The Great Sex Experiment, was totally unsuitable for the job.
I spent nearly three decades in the prison service working at the highest security jails in the land. I came across similar corruption cases, but nothing to the extent we see today.
Most involved male staff who would bring drugs into jail.
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I can only recall two women having flings with prisoners at Wormwood Scrubs in the 11 years I was there.
One case involved phone sex, after the inmate got hold of a mobile, which is considered contraband.
We were able to access thousands of messages between him and the female guard.
The second involved police surveillance. They watched as the officer picked up a parcel full of drugs in a car park in west London and took it to her lover in prison.
We were waiting at the other side of the gate with drug dogs and when we searched her car, we found a lot of mobiles, cannabis and some heroin. She got a seven-year sentence.
Such instances were much less common than they are now, and it all stems from a national decline in the prison service when it comes to discipline, recruitment, vetting and support.
It seems to me that these sex cases are almost a daily occurrence and, for those who end up in court, they have only been caught through luck.
Insufficient training
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Eighteen-year-olds can join the service after one of the shortest training programmes of officers in the world.
Someone with just 10 weeks of training can find themselves straight on a landing, mixing with hardened criminals.
In some places in Europe, officers are taught to a degree level.
That’s not to say that if you have a degree, you can’t be corrupt, but at the minute we have teenagers with little life experience trying to tell an offender doing 13 years to life what to do. It just doesn’t work.
Governors now have no autonomy as to who walks through the gates because the recruitment process isn’t fit for purpose.
If someone is employed who they have concerns about, they can’t do anything about it unless they catch them red-handed doing something they shouldn’t.
Someone with just 10 weeks of training can find themselves straight on a landing, mixing with hardened criminals
Vanessa Frake
It used to be that recruits took an English and maths exam to prove they are proficient in both, and had to go through an interview with three members on a panel.
You then had to do about a month at an establishment and three months at training school before you were on probation for a year.
Now most jobs are filled online.
You can tell an awful lot more about someone when you meet them face-to-face than you can on a phone call or even Zoom.
Look at de Sousa Abreu. How did she make it through the vetting process when she starred on a reality TV show and had dubious social media? Is that the kind of person we want to run our prisons?
Ripe for corruption
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When I joined the service we had national recruitment, so somebody from, say, Durham, would end up working in the Isle of Wight so they had no links to the area.
Now jobs are local and young officers can unlock a cell door and come face-to-face with someone they know – an old friend, or even a member of their extended family.
That puts people in a vulnerable position and ripe for potential corruption.
Discipline had also fallen. In my day you were never allowed to alter your uniform to make your trousers fit more closely, or whatever, and you didn’t get to wear make-up or piercings and you had to cover up tattoos.
There’s none of that now.
Vulnerable
Another problem is the wages. A new guard is paid around £32,000 which, in inner cities like London, is not a lot of money.
Officers used to be given quarters to live in which took some of the pressure off, but now they are vulnerable to financial corruption, trying to make more money to live.
All of these factors lead to vulnerability which could see people corrupted.
The Ministry of Justice will say that most staff are hard working and honest and that they don’t stand for anything like this, but they don’t do anything about it.
They just want to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
Another problem is the wages. A new guard is paid around £32,000 which, in inner cities like London, is not a lot of money
Vanessa Frake
When these women are caught, their punishment isn’t enough to be a deterrent and many escape with suspended sentences.
And what about other female officers?
After de Sousa Abreu was jailed, inmates in Wandsworth were wolf-whistling, shouting ‘you’re next Miss’ at guards.
They take a huge risk, too. Prison is a hub of intelligence and, let me tell you, prisoners can’t hold their own water.
If they are having sex they will tell their pad mates and, once that gets out, it’s only a matter of time before an inmate mentions something to an officer, and an investigation is launched.
Your name is dragged through the mud and your career is over.
Manipulative
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Prisoners are manipulative by nature and they don’t fall in love with female officers – they use them for what they can get out of them, whether it be drugs, mobiles, sex or favourite jobs in the jail.
They have what we rarely have – time. They’ve got time to notice if somebody has changed their uniform or their hair and give out flirty comments.
If there’s two of you working on a landing with over 100 inmates and somebody makes a flirty comment and you don’t know how to handle it properly due to lack of training, it can be daunting.
Women are also much more understanding by nature when lags offer a sob story, but it all goes back to training; how to deal with those emotional problems without crossing a line.
When these women are caught, their punishment isn’t enough to be a deterrent and many escape with suspended sentences
Vanessa Frake
At training school I was always taught there was a line. We were on one side and they were on the other, there were no grey areas.
That seems to have gone completely out the window now.
Working in a prison has never been a popular job. It’s not a vote winner and joe public likes to think a criminal has got his just desserts, but behind that wall, we have to work with these people and build professional relationships with them.
We used to have recruitment fares to persuade people from the army or navy, who had high standards and discipline, to join the service, but we don’t do that anymore.
Cutting corners is what it’s all about now.
Unless you invest in staff and are prepared to update prisons where sewage is running down the landings and people are expected to work, we are never going to attract the right people.
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