A report by the Sun has revealed that Dozens of prison officers have been caught sharing “inappropriate relationships” with jailbirds. Ministry of Justice figures show 43 guards were punished for being too close to an inmate in the past three years.
Some of the relationships were so serious that the officers themselves were prosecuted or sacked. Freedom of Information figures obtained by The Sun show 15 officers were disciplined in 2014, 14 in 2015 and a further 14 in 2016 for forming an “inappropriate relationship with a prisoner or ex prisoner”.
Some of the staff who were exposed during the period are believed to have had sex with prisoners, others had sent explicit texts and letters or met up with prisoners outside work.
The Sun UK revealed yesterday how female officer Faron Selvage, 21, is being investigated after lesbian convict Sydnee Offord claimed they enjoyed secret trysts in her cell. While last month Kiah Andrusjak, 23, was jailed for giving killer con Shane Boyd, 24, X-rated snaps and showering him with gifts.
The Prison Service says it has strict guidelines about what constitutes an inappropriate relationship between staff and criminals, and anybody breaking the rules will face the toughest sanctions.
However they have refused to provide the exact number of officers sacked or allowed to continue working. Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, West Yorks, has called for automatic dismissals for any officer caught in a bid to halt serious security breaches.
He told The Sun: “It’s obviously very serious it’s not necessarily the relationship itself it’s what the position it puts the prison officer in. “It compromises them and makes them susceptible to blackmail and susceptible to helping bring in contraband – it just puts the prison officer in a position where discipline is harder to enforce in prison.
“There is no alternative but to weed out officers who get themselves into that situation. Obviously you can sympathise with people who have got themselves into a certain situation but that can’t be tolerated in a prison environment. “It should be the default position for someone to be dismissed. Unless there are very unique mitigating circumstances, it’s very difficult to see how you can carry on.”
In 2015/16, 1,417 staff faced at least one investigation at a rate of 3.1 per 100 staff. MoJ figures show that between January 2008 and October 2010, some 126 prison workers were investigated and found to have had inappropriate relationships with inmates at jails in England and Wales.
