Hundreds of jail staff fired over sex, drugs... and dozing on the job!

PRISON staff are being sacked at the rate of three a week for offences including corruption, fraud and bedding inmates, figures reveal.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 1,121 officers and other employees were dismissed for transgressions of 40 separate categories of misconduct between 2014 and 2020.

Forty-three lost their jobs over ‘inappropriate’ relationships with convicts and more than 500 were let go for issues relating to ‘breach of security’, ‘performance of duties’, ‘bringing discredit on Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’ and ‘professional misconduct’.

Other reasons for staff being given the boot included the use of ‘unnecessary force’ on prisoners, sexual harassment or assault and being ‘asleep on duty’.

In one incident, an unnamed prison officer at HMP Rye Hill in Northamptonshire was dismissed after she ‘failed to notice’ a sex offender was dead in December 2019.

An official report said the guard opened Stephen Maddock’s cell but did not check on him, ‘which meant that no one realised [he] was dead for another half an hour’. The cases of staff having affairs with prisoners included Lauren McIntyre, an officer at HMP Albany on the Isle of Wight.

Now serving three years behind bars herself, she had a four-month affair with double murderer Andrew Roberts, and provided him with the phone number of a fellow officer.

Meanwhile, officer Stephanie Smithwhite was jailed for having an affair with gangster and drug dealer Curtis Warren at the maximum-security HMP Frankland near Durham.

The figures relate to prison staff working south of the Border.

According to the new data, 13,432 prison staff have been investigated since 2014 for alleged offences including 700 cases of abusive language or behaviour towards prisoners, visitors or colleagues.

The Ministry of Justice said: ‘The vast majority of prison officers and other staff carry out their duties to the high standards the public rightly expect, but the small minority who fall short are held to account.’

Last night, the Prison Officers’ Association did not reply to requests for comment.