Child-abuse pics found on jail wing housing sex offenders
INDECENT images of children have been uncovered on a prison wing where sex offenders are housed, the M.E.N. can reveal.
Police are investigating the discovery on a ‘protection wing’ at the privately-run Forest Bank prison in Salford.
Officers were called to the troubled prison on October 18 following a report that ‘a number of indecent images of children had been found in the possession of an inmate at HMP Forest Bank,’ a spokesman for GMP said.
“GMP’s Sex Offender Management Unit is now investigating. No arrests have currently been made,” they added.
Matt Spencer, director at HMP Forest Bank, said: “We can confirm illicit items were found following the vigilant work of our staff and have referred this incident to the police.”
The jail has a number of ‘protection wings’ where sex offenders and other inmates are kept away from the main prison population over fears they may be attacked.
The jail, which is run by Sodexo, has been hit by a series of negative headlines in recent years.
Earlier this month, the M.E.N. revealed a prison officer had been arrested on suspicion of smuggling mobile phones into the jail in Agecroft.
The phones were said to have been found in his boots.
An inspection last month revealed that outbreaks of violence – mostly between prisoners, and much of it serious – has doubled at Forest Bank over three years.
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, said the Salford prison had been generally well-led, competent and confident since the last inspection in 2016. But he warned that safety had ‘deteriorated.’
A third of prisoners out of 1,460 said they felt unsafe during a spot inspection in May, while the figure was even higher for vulnerable prisoners, at 52 per cent.