The faces of Britain’s prison crisis: Female officers caught fraternizing with dangerous prisoners behind bars – as it turned out, more than 30 were punished for ‘inappropriate relationships’ last year alone

The number of prison staff being punished for illegal relationships with inmates has almost tripled in less than a decade – amid a stream of young female officers ending up in jail themselves after becoming entangled with criminals.

Figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request show that in the period 2024-2025, 32 prison staff were subjected to disciplinary action after developing an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with a prisoner or ex-prisoner, compared to 12 in 2017-2018.

On average, more than seven in ten are made redundant each year, from seven in 2017-18 to sixteen in 2023-24.

For only a handful of locations, individual figures for each prison were provided by HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), citing data protection legislation. There are approximately 36,000 prison staff in England and Wales.

In many cases, the officers facing disciplinary action are young, female staff members who have developed illegal relationships with inmates and helped them smuggle drugs into prison to win their affection.

Critics have suggested that HMPPS is failing to properly vet and train new recruits to ensure they are not seduced by smart prisoners.

Neil O’Brien, the shadow minister for policy innovation who obtained the data, told the Daily Mail: ‘Staff selection is clearly failing to weed out people with the wrong mindsets and attitudes.

‘The Prison Service needs an overwhelming focus on selecting people who will keep order in prisons and protect public safety, rather than on other softer targets. That goal should influence the entire recruitment process.”

However, HMPPS attributes the rising figures to the success of its anti-corruption taskforce in rooting out misbehaving officers.

Reports suggest the Prison Service is building training on how to avoid being seduced and manipulated by prisoners into its new comprehensive training program for new officers, called Enable.

Justice experts say prison bosses need to get better at identifying problems before they become serious.

Vanessa Frake, a former prison governor who worked in prisons for 27 years, told the Daily Mail: ‘If the prison service is getting better at identifying inappropriate relationships, that is a good thing.

“But an increase in cases should still worry us. Prison staff hold a position of enormous trust and power. They have access to vulnerable people, confidential information and the ability to bring things into prison that prisoners should not have.

“An inappropriate relationship is not just a matter of someone’s private life; it can become a serious safety problem.

‘Most prison officers are decent, hard-working people who do incredibly difficult work. But recruitment and retention pressures do matter.

‘If you’re struggling to attract and retain experienced staff, you need to be absolutely sure you have the same standards of vetting, training, supervision and professional boundaries.’

Among those exterminated is Isabelle Dale, who was jailed for three and a half years after having a sexual relationship with inmates Shahid Sharif and Connor Money. She allegedly had sex with Sharif in the prayer room at HMP Coldingley in Surrey.

Dale conspired to smuggle in envelopes infused with the synthetic cannabinoid herb, telling Money – jailed for killing his best friend in a high-speed crash – that security was not “too hot” in searching his cell for an illegal mobile phone.

She quit her job at the end of 2022 following an internal investigation and was eventually arrested during her sixth visit to Sharif after he was transferred to HMP Swaleside on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.

Piercing-laden Alicia Novas, 20, was jailed for three years in January after building a relationship with violent armed burglar Declan Winkless, smuggling him with cannabis, tobacco and mobile phones and exchanging thousands of messages.

Novas was arrested after a video of her having sex with a prisoner was circulated on Snapchat at HMP Five Wells. A judge noted: ‘Given your age and inexperience you were vulnerable to manipulation.’

Perhaps the most high-profile case in recent history was that of Linda De Sousa Abreu, who was filmed having sex with a prisoner in his cell at HMP Wandsworth in London in June 2024 in a surveillance-breaking video that went viral online.

De Sousa Abreu, who also had an account on adult content creation platform OnlyFans while working as a prison guard, was jailed for 15 months and released after serving a third of her sentence.

There are many more: mother-of-one Katie Evans called herself ‘the queen’ as she showered a robber with attention and performed sex acts on him; Charlotte Winstanley told a violent criminal she ‘literally prayed’ to bear his child; Rebecca Green was jailed after becoming involved with a convicted murderer.

Some, like 23-year-old Megan Breen, were luckier: she was given a 10-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months after she told a prisoner she loved him and had sex with him when he was released under duress.

The similarities in each case are not difficult to discern: Each officer was a young woman at the start of their careers: Dale was 23 when she went to prison in January; Novas, 20; De Sousa Abreu, now 32, had been working for a few months; Evans was 26.

Research from the House of Commons Library shows that corruption in prisons is increasing partly because staff are younger and more inexperienced.

Official figures suggest that HMPPS in prisons, probation services and youth detention centers are increasingly staffed by young female recruits.

In 2020-2021, 55 percent of new hires across the service were women, and 50.8 percent were under 30 years old. About 30 percent of all prison staff are women.

Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor has noted that such inexperienced officers can be easily manipulated by clever inmates, who conspire to bully an inexperienced officer, who is then rescued by “some very charming” co-conspirator.

“By that time, they have already started to bring that person in and establish a collusive relationship,” he said. “And that’s something that advanced prisoners can start experimenting with.”

Linton Weirich, the serial burglar who began a relationship with Linda De Sousa Abreu, says the composition of prison staff has changed, with hardened ex-military veterans replaced by young, impressionable women in their early 20s.

Weirich – who has since called his sexual encounters with De Sousa Abreu “the worst mistake of his life” – told The Sun earlier this year: “Now they have young girls and 19- and 20-year-old boys working as security guards trying to tell us what to do.”

And Morgan Farr Varney, a former prison officer who was jailed after starting an illicit affair with a convicted drug dealer, has called for the minimum age for prison staff recruits to be raised from 18 to 25.

Farr Varney, who snuck out for sex sessions with drug dealer Jordan Stones at HMP Lindholme in Yorkshire, says she was ’emotionally vulnerable’ and ‘naive’ when she joined.

Ms Frake – former head of operations and security at HMP Wormwood Scrubs – says the prison service must be “relentless” in getting the message across to prison staff that professional boundaries should not be crossed.

‘Prisoners are very good at identifying weaknesses in staff. They can manipulate, groom and exploit officers – and sometimes officers themselves cross the line,” she said.

“Once that happens, the officer can become the person being monitored rather than the person maintaining security.”

She added: “The real test is not whether the number of disciplinary cases goes up or down.

“At issue is whether the Prison Service prevents these relationships from developing in the first place and removes people who endanger the safety and integrity of the prison.

‘There must be zero tolerance for employees who abuse that position of trust.’

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: ‘Any inappropriate relationship between prisoners and staff is unacceptable and we have no hesitation in taking the strongest action against staff who fail to meet our high standards.

‘Although the majority are hardworking and professional, anyone found guilty of inappropriate relationships with prisoners could be dismissed from the service and sent to prison themselves.’