A scandal-ridden prison dubbed the “cushiest in the country” has been smacked with a recruitment crisis after so many guards ended up in relationships with lags.
HMP Berwyn in Wrexham, North Wales, has seen a number of flings between guards and inmates, leading to fewer and fewer female officers – which in turn is having problems of its own.
Freedom of Information requests from the Mirror found in March that 18 female staff had been fired from the prison for getting into relationships with inmates.
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A new report from Independent Monitoring Boards has found the lack of female support staff is "the biggest destabilising factor" at the £212million penitentiary.
Looking at the period from March 2022 to February 2023, it was found that staffing shortages and inexperienced personnel were some of the factors deemed to be "adversely affecting" the Category B and C prison.
A spokesman for The Prison Officers Association told the Sun: “At Berwyn, staff there for only three or four months are teaching new staff. When you put young staff in and they mix with experienced prisoners — a lot of them wealthy — they are cultivating them.”
Among its infamous incidents, the likes of Emily Watson and Ayshea Gunn were found to have had relationships with inmates, the former with drug dealer John McGee.
He had been serving an eight-year sentence for causing death by dangerous driving, while Gunn fell in with armed robber Khuram Razaq with the two understood to have exchanged “highly sexualised” images.
Jennifer Gavan meanwhile accepted £150 to smuggle a phone into prison for robber Alex Coxon and then was found swapping lewd messages on WhatsApp.
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