Eighteen female guards at the same prison have been fired for forbidden relationships with inmates.
The forbidden relationships all happened at Britain's biggest prison HMP Berwyn. The record figures, uncovered in Freedom of Information requests by the Mirror, come after three of the women ended up in court over their illicit flings.
The relationships took place over the past six years at the jail in Wrexham, North Wales, run by His Majesty's Prison Service. One guard, Emily Watson, had a sexual relationship with Liverpool man John McGee between October 2017 and January 2018.
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A court heard in 2019 how Watson had become infatuated with McGee and went alone to his cell multiple times. NorthWalesLive reported an investigation was launched by the prison who found they had maintained contact via an Instagram account.
Convicted drug dealer McGee was serving eight years for causing death by dangerous driving after killing Walton dad Richard Bratin in December 2015. McGee ploughed into Mr Bratin while trying to escape police.
He was on licence at the time after being released midway through a sentence for dealing class A drugs. Watson was jailed for 12 months after pleading guilty to a charge of misconduct in public office by engaging in an intimate sexual relationship with a prisoner.
Colleagues Jennifer Gavan and Ayshea Gunn were also locked up after flings with prisoners. Gavan accepted £150 to smuggle a phone into robber Alex Coxon's cell and the pair were later caught swapping raunchy pictures via WhatsApp.
And probation officer Gunn hooked up with armed robber Khuram Razaq and exchanged "highly sexualised" photos and videos. Gavan was jailed for eight months while Gunn spent 12 months behind bars.
Mark Fairhurst, chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, blamed the flings on "the wrong kind of women" being hired. He said: "Staff being recruited don’t have face-to-face interviews… it’s all done on Zoom.
"A lot of people getting these jobs don’t have enough life experience and are susceptible to conditioning from prisoners. Your figures just prove what we've been warning the employer for years."
Since 2019, 31 female officers in England and Wales have been dismissed for inappropriate relationships according to Ministry of Justice statistics. They include one officer who had an inmate's baby.
HMP Berwyn has previously been dubbed the UK’s "cushiest” jail after snaps emerged of hotel-standard digs. Cells have no bars on the windows and come with ensuite bathrooms. Inmates also have TVs, laptops and phones.
A Prison Service spokesman said: "The majority of staff are hard-working and honest but we are doing more to catch the small number who break the rules."
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