Why prison guards have sex with inmates More than 10 female staff are caught every year

As Britain’s summer of crisis continues, the penitentiary industrial complex could soon be overwhelmed. Not because of a lack of resources: estimates put the prisons’ budget at £4 billion. And it’s not for a lack of bipartisan thinking: the Labour government, like the Tories before it, support the use of non-custodial sentences and the continuation of the early release scheme.

Rather, what the prison system has a major problem with is retention. According to the Prison Reform Trust, half of officers who left the service in 2021 had been in the role for less than three years, with more than a quarter leaving after less than a year. And while there are many reasons for this, one in particular has been thrust into the spotlight as of late: the curious phenomenon of female staff falling for inmates.

Let’s start with the most recent, and no doubt most infamous, case to date.

We’re inside what appears to be a prison cell in HMP Wandsworth. The camera shows a well-built tattooed man, legs akimbo, receiving oral sex from someone on their knees. To add more context, the cameraman pans around the cell. We catch sight of the grinning cameraman smoking a spliff, before he cuts back to the couple. Then comes the big reveal: as the pair start to have sex, we catch sight of a woman’s uniform. She’s a prison officer.

For the next two minutes and 59 seconds, what transpires is essentially a porn movie set in a real-life prison cell, involving real-life inmates and (former) real-life prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu, 30, from Fulham. “Guys, we’ve made history,” says Wandsworth’s answer to Cecile B. De Mille before going straight to camera: “That’s how we live in Wandsworth, bruv.”

It remains unclear what will happen to this still unidentified character and his cellmate, 36-year-old burglar Linton Weirich. Likewise, senior management heads are sure to roll at the prison, which was just handed another £100 million of funding following a “catastrophic” inspection. Only last week, a prison officer was suspended after being filmed on a contraband mobile rolling a joint in a cell with two prisoners.

The focus of the fall-out, however, has fallen on De Sousa Abreu, who it turns out “models” on OnlyFans, has appeared in a Channel 4 show about swinging, and is in an open relationship with her husband. The Portuguese national, who was apprehended at Heathrow airport attempting to flee the country, pled guilty last week at Isleworth Crown Court to one charge of misconduct in a public office.

When she receives her sentence later this year, her name will be added to a disturbingly long list. In the three years to March 2023, 31 female prison staff working in male prisons were busted for having intimate relationships with prisoners, including one who gave birth to her lover’s baby and another who had his cell number tattooed on her thigh. This represents a 61% increase on the previous four-year period, but only covers male prisons run by the HM Prison Service — and not the 14 private institutions contractually managed by companies such as G4S Justice Services, Serco Custodial Services and Sodexo Justice Services.

If prison sources are to be believed, however, the number of female staff sacked for having affairs with inmates is significantly higher. To save face, I’m told, prison governors prefer to have a member of staff resign rather than go through the ritual humiliation that comes with a full-blown investigation.

As a fellow at the University of the Arts’ Design Against Crime Research Lab, I’ve visited numerous prisons in the UK and abroad, including HMP Belmarsh. I know first-hand the high-level security measures that are put in place to stop inmates from gaining access to contraband — from mobile phones to drugs — via visitors who typically attempt to smuggle goods orally or via other cavities.

One member of staff inside Belmarsh told me that a mobile phone could change hands inside for up to £5,000. For the benefit of co-workers and official visitors alike, staff created a glass display containing assorted items, from electronic devices to knives, which have made their way into the category-A prison.

But with increasingly sophisticated surveillance equipment stemming the flow of contraband coming through prison visitors’ centres, vulnerable female prison staff have proven to be a useful conduit for funnelling illegal items into the prison black market. “You can spot them a mile off,” says Lee, a reformed criminal who’s spent time in HMP Wandsworth for serious drugs and robbery offences. “You see them on the wing with the hair, the nails, being all familiar and that, and you just know they’re an easy touch.”

Lee says that he managed to manipulate female prison officers by “putting it on them” — either by relentlessly working on them or by having criminals on the outside find out information about them via social media or interconnecting networks. As well as exploiting weaknesses, Lee says inmates are often looking for “pleasers” — women who want to help prisoners after buying some sob story, and then find themselves making a very human yet damaging connection with someone who’s in jail for a good reason: they’re a liar, a cheat and a manipulator.

On the one hand, it’s obvious that these women are often in emotional turmoil. As a judge remarked in a recent case of a female prison officer who started a relationship with a convicted murderer: “You have shown remorse, your motivation is not financial, but emotional. You are, and were, acutely vulnerable.” Or as Lee says: “People think screws are smart cause they’ve got a uniform on and a little power, but they’re just fucking glorified security guards.”

Following the HMP Wandsworth sex tape scandal, The Guardian dragged up an ex-prison officer to blame De Sousa Abreu’s behaviour on 14 years of Tory cuts. While decreasing staffing levels and an increasing prison population have led to a raft of problems within the prison system, my ex-lag Lee is dismissive of economic fingering. “Fuck The Guardian, and fuck the Tories,” he says, dismissing the notion that female prison officers who fall for prisoners have anyone to blame but themselves. “Screws get paid a chunk of change [starting salaries range from £30,000-£40,0000, plus overtime]. And for doing what? Most of the time you’re either doped up or banged up in your cell. Being a screw is easy money.”

As a result, when De Sousa Abreu learns her fate later this year, there will be many clamouring for the book to be thrown at her. She has, after all, made a mockery of the prison system and feeds into a narrative that the authorities have lost control of the public realm. But by putting her hands up she saves the sordid details of her infamous video being bandied around in open court. While I doubt it will save her a jail sentence, there is one silver lining: it will allow the prison system to move on and get back to the business of putting people behind bars — for all the right reasons.

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David Matthews is an award-winning writer and filmmaker.

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