The Prison Officers’ Association is calling for extra vetting procedures after at least 45 female prison officers have been caught having illicit relationships with inmates since 2021
Elite anti-corruption squads are strengthening their ranks in an effort to halt a surge of female prison wardens engaging in forbidden relationships with prisoners in their cells, it has emerged.
The Prison Officers’ Association reveals that additional investigators are being deployed to combat a rising number of guards conducting illicit romances with hardened offenders behind bars. Enhanced anti-corruption training has been implemented across British prisons following a series of high-profile arrests and prosecutions for unlawful liaisons.
The POA is demanding improved screening processes after it was revealed that at least 45 female prison officers have been apprehended since 2021 – averaging nearly ten annually. This represents a stark increase from nine cases during the three-year span from 2017 to 2020.
The catalogue of wayward officers caught orchestrating prison cell encounters includes former OnlyFans model Linda de Sousa Abreu, who was filmed engaging in sexual activity with a prisoner.
Just this week, disgraced prison officer Rebecca Pinckard, 46, received a custodial sentence after being caught performing a sexual act on an inmate, captured by her own body-worn camera footage in a storage cupboard at HMP Highpoint in Suffolk on 5 July 2024. Mick Pimblett, Assistant General Secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA), today confirmed that additional personnel were being assigned to anti-corruption departments, reports the Mirror.
And a spokesperson for the POA said: “The Prison Officers’ Association condemns any form of misconduct or corruption within our ranks. Inadequate vetting undermines the integrity of the prison service and places staff, prisoners and the public at risk. Robust recruitment checks and firm, proportionate penalties for those found guilty of misconduct are essential to maintain trust and safety across the prison estate.”
De Sousa Abreu, 30, completed five months of a 15-month sentence after being caught on camera engaging in sexual activity with burglar Linton Weirich in his cell at HMP Wandsworth. She was detained following the explicit footage – which showed her performing a sex act on the prisoner whilst in full uniform and was recorded by another inmate – being circulated online.
De Sousa Abreu operated an OnlyFans account alongside her husband and was convicted of misconduct in a public office at Isleworth Crown Court.
Yesterday evening, Dr Bronwen Frow-Jones from Cardiff University, who spent a decade on the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Wandsworth before conducting research into prison corruption, declared that De Sousa Abreu should never have cleared the vetting process.
She stated the incident highlighted failures by authorities regarding staff retention, training and screening – resulting in corruption at every level within prison establishments. Dr Bronwen Frow-Jones told the Mirror: “During my research I have seen young female prison officers who just didn’t look like they were taking it very seriously.
“They were flirting with the prisoners like they were hanging around at a nightclub. These men are in prison for a reason – he is not a chap at the bar.
“These inexperienced young women have fake eyelashes and false nails. What are they doing with false nails? Most of them will have to take part in a restraint at some point where they will literally be rolling on the ground trying to restrain a prisoner and they’ve got their hair extensions.”
The shocking findings emerge just days before a teenage prison guard faces sentencing for engaging in sexual relations with an inmate behind bars. Alicia Novas, 19, confessed to having an affair with Declan Winkless while employed at Five Wells prison in Wellingborough, Northants.
The tryst was probed after a video was shared of an inmate at the privately-run jail having sex with an officer in his cell. Prosecutors say Novas also smuggled cannabis and told her lover, 30, about a prison informant. Novas is due to appear in court on Monday.
She is the latest official to be hauled through the courts for striking up illicit relationships in UK jails, where levels of violence, self-harm and drugs are shockingly high. Figures last year from prisons in England and Wales revealed a surge in staff investigated for corruption, with those probed for relationships with prisoners up from 51 in 2020 to 144 in 2024.
Experts say inexperienced staff – who have previously been recruited on Zoom meetings and undergo just eight weeks of training – struggle to cope. Most recent figures for 2024 show 3,491 Band 3 to 5 officers were appointed – a decrease of 2,012 compared with the previous year.
Meanwhile, 3,078 guards left their jobs in 2024, an increase of 34 compared with the year before. A report by the Prison Reform Trust in December found that 84 per cent of prison workers said there were too few staff to ensure that prisoners could engage in purposeful activity.
And Dr Frow-Jones says organised criminals are seizing on the shortages – by enticing their own wives and girlfriends to join the prison service so they can build an empire behind bars.
She said: “Organised criminals are getting into this and are persuading people, quite often girlfriends and wives, to join the prison service with the mission of trafficking contraband. There’s a lot of money in it and for members of the organised criminal gangs in prisons it can be a lucrative business.”
Dr Frown Jones also said that a lack of support left some prison officers “isolated” and leaving them vulnerable to “manipulation, blackmail and threats”. She said: “There has been some American research on vulnerability factors, and it identified those who are female, single, young, less educated and experienced.
“There was an analysis of recent recruits into British prisons or prisoners in England Wales and a lot of the new recruits would fall squarely into those vulnerability factors. Then there’s the additional vulnerability factors such as running an Only Fans previously being the victim of sexual abuse.”
Last year Megan Breen, 23, was spared jail after having sex with an inmate while he was on home release. She met the man during night shifts at HMP Prescoed when she was 19.
In February last year [2025] Toni Cole, 29, was jailed for a year after she sent more than 4,000 sexual messages to an inmate at HMP Five Wells, Northants.
In August 2025, 26-year-old Aimee Duke was jailed for 12 months after acting inappropriately with several inmates while working at the same jail [HMP Five Wells, Northants].
In the same month [AUG 2025] Probation officer Leonie Wilkinson, 27, was given a 12-month suspended sentence after she failed to reveal she was in a relationship with a prisoner when she got the job at HMP Preston in 2020.
This week Isabelle Dale, 23, was jailed for three-and-a-half years after she had a four-minute sex session with convicted robber Shahid Sharif in the prayer room at HMP Coldingley in Surrey as two prisoners kept watch outside. And earlier this month [JAN] prison tutor Melissa Murphy, 49, was jailed for eight months after she wrote explicit love letters to an inmate and locked herself in a workshop alone with him at HMP Chelmsford in Essex.
In March 2024 prison guards Aleesha Bates, 29, got two years, eight months jail and Jodie Wilkes, 27, a 12-month suspended sentence after admitting a three-way fling with an inmate at HMP Buckley Hall in Rochdale. At HMP Berwyn in Wrexham, 18 women were sacked or have quit over inappropriate relationships with inmates in the first six years after it opened in 2017.
Last year Morgan Farr Varney, was sentenced to 10 months in jail earlier this year after being caught in a cupboard with a convicted drug dealer. The 24-year-old, who was arrested in January 2023, admitted sending the prisoner love letters, which were later found in his cell. She launched a petition calling for the minimum age for guards to be increased.
On her petition page, she wrote: “I am speaking out to share my story, not to excuse the mistakes I made when I was younger, but to shed light on how immaturity, inexperience, and emotional vulnerability can have devastating consequences when placed in an environment as complex and high-pressure as a prison.
“When I first joined the prison service, I was young, eager to prove myself, to help others, and to build a career. But I was also naive. I didn’t yet understand how power dynamics, emotional manipulation, and psychological pressure could affect a person, especially someone still finding their identity and confidence.
“Over time, I found myself caught in a situation that I was not emotionally equipped to handle. I was manipulated, subtly and gradually, until I could no longer see the boundaries I was crossing.
“The consequences of that manipulation were life-changing. I lost three years of my life, defended my abuser, endured imprisonment myself, and suffered immense personal and emotional trauma. If proper measures of support had been in place, things could have been very different.
“I didn’t feel able to confide in management or talk openly about what I was experiencing. There was no safe space to express confusion, doubt, or fear. Instead, the only so-called safeguard was a basic anti-corruption slideshow, a tick-box exercise that does nothing to prepare you for the psychological and emotional manipulation that can happen inside a prison.
“That same tick-box training is later used against you the moment you find yourself in a vulnerable situation. Being sent to jail was the hardest experience of my life. I faced humiliation, loss, isolation, and the harsh reality of what it means to have no control over your future.
“I also endured the public judgment that came with seeing my story turned into dramatised headlines, full of exaggerations, omissions, and outright lies. The media painted me as a scandal, not a young woman who had been vulnerable and manipulated within a system that failed to protect her. I accept responsibility for my actions, but I also know that what happened to me was not solely a matter of personal failure.”
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