Three female prison officers have been found to have had inappropriate relationships with inmates at the recently opened HMP Five Wells, which was forced to make improvements
Sending over 4,000 flirty messages to an inmate while working at the prison is sure to get you sent behind bars, and that’s exactly what happened to Toni Cole.
The 29-year-old female prison officer was sentenced to one year of jail time after she shared 4,369 intimate messages with one of the prisoners at HMP Five Wells – Northamptonshire’s new ‘super-prison’.
Cole was found to have engaged in ‘contact which was sexualised or flirtatious’ with an inmate via 18 video calls when she appeared before the Northampton Crown Court. The court was also presented with evidence of how Cole would sit on the inmate’s lap, kiss him, and sometimes even inform him of cell searches in advance.
Cole’s misconduct was discovered by her bosses at the Category C prison, with the offences occurring between 9 December 2022 and 25 January 2023. Cole pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office and was ordered to pay a £187 surcharge, alongside her one-year prison sentence.
However, she is not the only officer who has been found guilty of this kind of misconduct at the Wellingborough jail. The previous summer, 31-year-old female officer Rachel Stanton was at the receiving end of a suspended sentence after being found guilty of her own inappropriate relations with an inmate.
The mother-of-five was a trainee officer and was discovered to have been involved in a romantic relationship with Edwin Poole, an armed robber. In Rachel’s case, the staff at the prison found several intimate images as well as a love letter in Poole’s jail cell. CCTV footage also caught the pair entering a prison storeroom for over an hour.
Rachel was suspended following the discovery of her inappropriate relationship with Edwin in July 2022, and the inmate was transferred to a different prison. Not one to be deterred, Rachel continued visiting her lover in the other prison and the pair even had a child together, however they have since separated.
A third, unidentified female officer at the prison was also suspended and arrested for similar rule violations. Cole’s conviction arrives at a time when there is heightened scrutiny directed towards G4S – the operators of the new £253million prison facility, reports MailOnline.
Concerns were recently raised by inspectors over potential food shortages and the presence of drugs within the prison, as well as over staff safety. In December, a thorough inspection into prisoner welfare at HMP Five Wells found that the levels of self-harm had increased by 27 per cent, and that not enough work was being done to address the violence or the bullying within the facility’s four walls. The inspection also brought to light the fact that a fourth director had been appointed at the facility by G4S in only two years, thus illuminating the challenges being faced by the prison.
The staff’s inexperience was also a matter of concern, with over 70 per cent of the appointed officers having only worked at the ‘super-prison’ for less than two years. However the report stated there was “encouraging evidence of progress” at the prison, which opened in 2022.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) found staff “had gained confidence” and more prisoners were “engaged in purposeful activity” at the category C jail. A spokesperson for G4S stated they were “pleased” for the recognition of their efforts to improve the facility “particularly in relation to purposeful activity and staff-prisoner relationships”.
It said: “We are continuing to make improvements in key areas, including reducing self-harm incidents by bolstering support through the introduction of a peer mentor scheme, and a new induction process which sees fellow prisoners help new arrivals to settle in.”
Meanwhile, just last month, Mail on Sunday reported that the number of prison officers engaging in sexual relationships with inmates was on the rise at UK prisons. Figures obtained from the Ministry of Justice found that 19 prison staff had been charged with misconduct in public office between 2023-24, making these the highest numbers in over a decade. 121 prison officers were found to have been charged with conducting inappropriate relationships with inmates over the past 10 years.
Almost 5,000 prison officers were also charged with a multitude of other offences over the past decade, with offences ranging from smuggling drugs into inmate cells to aiding and abetting the escape of prisoners. Figures from the Ministry of Justice also showed the 2023-24 period saw the highest number of officers charged in any single year over the past decade, with a total of 680 cases recorded.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson shared: “The vast majority of our prison officers are honest and hard-working. We will always take robust action against those who are not.”
