Wandsworth Prison Blues

It's certain that fine women eat/A crazy salad with their meat

Earlier this month Linda De Sousa Abreu entered the British prison system for the second time, having become the star of an X-rated video in which the warden was seen having sex with an inmate in his cell.

According to the Daily Mail report, crafted in the wonderful tabloidese of the British press, the married warden ‘romped’ with a convicted burglar in Wandsworth prison before performing a ‘sex act’.

Brazilian De Sousa also had an OnlyFans account sharing explicit content, advertising that ‘I am a happily married sexy latina who wants to share hot content with you. Experience my real life, real love, real sex and real orgasms!’

Her Instagram page featured the pineapple symbol, which is apparently code used by swingers, while De Sousa Abreu and her husband Nathan – who have an eight-year-old daughter together – were in 2023 also stars of Channel 4’s Open House: The Great Sex Experiment, in which - as part of that broadcaster’s ‘public service remit’ - couples ‘pushed the boundaries of the relationships at a luxury country escape.’

The video was made by a cellmate of the male star, who on his phone can be heard saying: ‘Guys we’ve made history, this is what I'm telling you… ‘This is how we roll in Wandsworth.’ He tells his cellmate: ‘You know you’re gangster innit!’ To add to the general air, the amateur cameraman was also smoking a joint, although I suppose in the greater scheme of things that hardly matters. The movie went viral, and the Spectator reports that a noted pair of porn actors even recreated the famous scene.

De Sousa’s co-star Linton Weirich, a prolific burglar and among the super-offenders responsible for the vast majority of crime, is serving nearly five years after being caught robbing a number of homes near him in southwest London while wearing an electronic tag. The 36-year-old had a heavily pregnant girlfriend when he was jailed, and this month, as she visited him in Swaleside Prison in Kent with their now three-month-old baby, he was attacked by a fellow criminal; the child suffered a fractured skull as a result.

From De Sousa Abreu’s OnlyFans page. Mr MacKay would not approve

Linda the sexy Latina was hardly unusual – dozens of female prison officers have been sacked for sexual relationships with prisoners since 2019, and at least 26 prosecuted. The numbers have risen sharply in recent years as the prison service has gone into crisis, starved of funding amid a failure of the previous government to build new jails. But it also clearly aggravated by an ideological factor, the naïve belief that placing young women among large numbers of aggressive, violent men is not going to cause problems.

Among the many other cases, in July last year a prison officer was arrested on suspicion of having an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with an inmate at Highpoint Prison in Suffolk. The officer, a mother in her forties, had gone into a room with the inmate but unfortunately switched on her bodycam, causing the footage to be sent to the control room like something from a 2000s gross-out movie.

In HMP Moorland a female guard was suspended over a sexual relationship with a prisoner, having engaged in ‘heavy petting’ with the sex offender. (Curiously, the jail refers to inmates as ‘residents’, and apparently some other prisons call them ‘clients’ or ‘service users’ to avoid ‘labelling’ them as offenders.)

Sunderland Prison officer Kelsey Calvert admitted to having an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with an inmate. Stephanie Heaps was jailed after she married convicted murderer Leon Ramsden and failed to tell Greater Manchester Police about her crime links.

In Rochdale, two prison staff had an affair with the same inmate. Aleesha Bates and Jodie Wilkes were both involved with Michael Cronshaw, described as a ‘Casanova crook’. Bates was sent to jail; Wilkes received a suspended sentence.

In Bridgend, 25 year old Elyse-May Hibbs was sentenced to six months in prison and struck off the nursing register for 12 months, after entering a relationship with convicted drug dealer Harri Pullen while treating him inside. Pullen also ‘terrified’ attractive prison officer Ruth Shmylo into intimate phone calls with him after threatening her family. She was cleared of any wrongdoing.

There is clearly something going on in Wales because at HMP Berwyn in Wrexham, no fewer than eighteen female staff have been sacked for relationships with inmates since the medium-risk prison was opened in 2017.

Among them are Jennifer Gavan, jailed for eight months in December 2022 after sending intimate photos to inmate Alex Coxon, and bringing a mobile phone into the jail. Roxanne Walker received a suspended sentence after engaging in ‘sexually explicit’ chats with an inmate, while another Berwyn staff member, probationary officer Ayshea Gunn, exchanged more than 1,200 phone calls, including explicit video calls, with prisoner Khuram Razaq, and even smuggled a pair of knickers into his cell.

Aisha Golsby was working at HMP Portland in Dorset when she became ‘besotted’ with convict Deano Harrison, even tipping him off about a cell search. She was jailed for 16 months. Joanne Hunter was jailed for three years for her relationship with Connor Willis while working at HMP Forest Bank in Salford. She was described as ‘naïve’ and ‘vulnerable’ in court, and apparently believed Willis was ‘in love’ with her – this led her to smuggle cannabis into the prison, and to send him explicit photographs.

Former governor Victoria Laithwaite, 47, was working as head of ‘safer custody’ and ‘equalities’ at HMP Onley when she began exchanging text messages with James Chalmers. a man with 46 previous convictions. She was sentenced to two years in jail as a result.

Katie Loxton, working at HMP Oakwood in Staffordshire, began an affair with Adam Higgs, during which time he made 3,451 calls to her, totalling 380 hours and costing him £798 in just six months. Of all these illicit relationships, this at least sounds the most romantic

Not only have several prison officers had relationships with inmates, but at least three have had their babies.

Corinne Redhead was jailed for nearly two years after a 12-month affair at Mount Prison in Hertfordshire. The 29-year-old warden had fallen in love with Robert O’Connor, and was caught after his mobile phone had been found inside a toilet, with her number listed under ‘My Baby’

Rachel Stanton of Northamptonshire was a mother of four working at HMP Five Wells when colleagues grew suspicious of her relationship with Edwin Poole, an armed robber with a history of violence who was serving over 10 years. A cell search discovered intimate photographers and a ‘sexually explicit letter’ she had written to him, leading to a trawl of CCTV footage which revealed they were alone in a storeroom for an hour.

She was suspended from work, while her lover was sent to another prison, where she continued to visit him. She had a child with the convict before they separated, and Stanton has since been convicted of misconduct and was lucky to escape with a suspended sentence. Her lawyer said in mitigation that she had allowed herself to be ‘exploited’ and ‘that she was an “inexperienced” officer who had just been chosen for a training course that would have seen her in charge of a whole landing of men at the super-prison.’

Then there was Kathryn Trevor, an officer at Maidstone Prison who had previously won awards for dealing with ‘vulnerable’ prisoners. She began a relationship with murderer David Quartey and subsequently gave birth to his baby, describing him as ‘my true love’. Quartey had inflicted 56 wounds on his victim, a doctor.

Among the other 31 women prison staff sacked between March 2020 and March 2023 was one who even had her lover’s cell number tattooed on her thigh. That figure represents a 50 per cent rise over the previous four years, and according to the BBC, there was a 34 per cent increase in staff sacked for misconduct just in the 12 months to June 2024. About 40 inappropriate relationships are now exposed each year.

It is not just officers finding themselves in trouble. In one of the more disturbing instances, a prison worker in Belmarsh was accused of having sex with Jordan MacSweeney, the killer of Zara Aleena

There was also a case in Australia where a prison psychologist began an affair with a member of a a child rape gang before marrying him, taking his surname and converting to Islam. As Yeats put it so well, ‘It’s certain that fine women eat/A crazy salad with their meat.’

The uncomfortable, unspoken truth behind this trend is that some women are attracted to violent and dangerous men. This is what once would have been called ‘the wisdom of the ages’, and has been well-known to meddling aunties throughout history.

Until 1982, women were not allowed to work in men’s prisons, in part because our forebears imagined precisely those outcomes which are now commonplace. Today almost 40 per cent of prison staff are female, serving an inmate population which is 96 per cent male. The number of female prison staff has risen by 27 per cent since 2017 ‘as part of a diversity drive, with women now accounting for 42 per cent of the total.’

Diversity drives, as with other progressive ideas, often have a symbiotic relationship with small-c conservative economic policy. In recent years the prison service has been starved of funding, and when pay in any sector declines, it will tend to become female-dominated, as women are more willing to accept lower wages.

This combination of ideology and austerity is not entirely dissimilar to the disastrous care in the community scheme, which came about because the authorities were keen to save money on mental health services, and their aims aligned with radicals who read too much R.D. Laing.

Tory ministers have vowed to stamp out prison affairs, but it’s hard to see how this is possible without funding which would enable a higher calibre of better-trained guards. Since 2010 the Government has closed 17 prisons, and the Conservatives also cut more than 10,000 prison places in their 14 years of power.

As a result of this underfunding and a lack of space, a scheme to allow prisoners to be released has now been extended indefinitely. The number of ‘super-prolific’ criminals who have been spared prison despite having 100 previous convictions under their belt is now 250 a year, a 200 per cent increase on 15 years ago.

This underfunding has led to a huge decline in morale among staff doing a difficult, dangerous but necessary job keeping the public safe. Wandsworth Prison, the setting for one of Britain’s most famous pornographic videos, was also where Iranian spy Daniel Khalife was serving time when he escaped in 2023. On the day of that jail break, nearly 40 per cent of staff were absent.

British jails are now so short of officers that they have focussed their energy on recruiting from abroad, with some new hires turning up for their job having spent the night camping or sleeping in their cars. Tom Wheatley, president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), was quoted in the Telegraph saying that there had been ‘issues about language and communication’ in some jails; some officers had been given jobs without any face-to-face interviews and given only six weeks training. (As for guards with OnlyFans accounts, this is apparently no bar to recruitment in the prison service.)

The lesson of the Boriswave fiasco is that cheap replacements from the developing world will usually prove to be of poorer quality than more expensive recruits from Britain. The quality of the service will deteriorate, while the new hires will most likely prove to be a net fiscal burden over their lifetime, eradicating the small, short-term savings to the Treasury.

The British state might be short of money, but the prison service is part of its primary purpose of protecting its citizens. A system starved of funding, and the ability to recruit effectively, puts huge pressure on judges and magistrates to keep dangerous men out, with disastrous consequences. The way the prison service has been underfunded is indeed criminal.

I feel sorry for poor De Sousa and the many other former officers now serving time; unlike so many prolific criminals now on the outside, they shouldn’t be in prison. Indeed, they shouldn’t have been working in men’s prisons in the first place.