A female former prison officer has been sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for 18 months, having admitted to an affair with a prisoner at HMP Five Wells where she was working.
The woman was 22 when she began working in the prison, and had been in the job for just three months when the relationship began.
Part of her job was to carry out welfare checks on the man, and in 2023 a mobile phone was found in his cell with over 660 messages between them, many very intimate. There was also evidence of 20 phone calls they shared, one of which lasted for over an hour.
The woman admitted sending him explicit photos and kissing him within the jail. She was dismissed in May 2023. In court, she pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office.
The judge at Northampton Crown Court said that he took into account evidence that she had ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), but that a custodial sentence was appropriate. He said he was suspending it partly due to her illness and partly because she had waited three years for the sentence to be passed and had committed no other offences. She is also required to undertake 50 hours of unpaid work and has been referred for mental health support.
She is the fifth woman officer from Five Wells to have been convicted over illicit relationships with prisoners within less than two years. Three of the earlier cases had seen the women imprisoned, and another had a suspended punishment. In a headline reporting the latest conviction, the Northamptonshire Telegraph dubbed the prison ‘HMP Five Girls’. The 1,700-capacity men’s prison near Wellingborough opened in 2022 and is managed by G4S.
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