1,000 prison officers corrupt, report claims
The head of the Prison Service has admitted corruption is a problem, after a leaked report revealed more than 1,000 officers were on the take.
Phil Wheatley said that in the “closed world” of prisons, there would “inevitably be some criminal collusion between staff and prisoners”.
But he insisted it was not a widespread issue, saying much of the evidence of corruption was anecdotal and the vast majority of prison staff were honest.
He was responding to a leaked report by the Metropolitan police and the Prison Service’s anti-corruption unit, which suggests hundreds of officers are smuggling drugs and mobile phones into prisons across England and Wales.
Some of them also take bribes from inmates to transfer them into less secure prisons, according to the report, which is the result of a major investigation concluded this spring but has only now been leaked to the BBC.
In many cases, the corruption begins when staff form relationships with prisoners on their watch. The report finds more than 500 of these “inappropriate relationships”.
Shadow prisons minister Edward Garnier warned that, if true, the claims explained why rehabilitation rates under the Labour government “are so appallingly low”.
“It is about time this government got a grip and showed some strategic leadership. Only then will prison be able to fulfil its purpose – to punish and rehabilitate prisoners and so deliver justice to the victims of crime,” he warned.
Responding, Mr Wheatley admitted that there was “always a problem about bent staff”, and the Prison Service needed to be alert to it.
“I am not complacent about the corruption issues facing the Prison Service,” the director general said.
He added: “We will continue to work hard to ensure that all our staff understand that we will not tolerate staff corruption in any form and will take appropriate punitive action against those who do not heed that message.”
But Mr Wheatley noted that the “hard evidence” – the falling drugs rate in prisons and the fact that there were only three escapes from prison last year showed a “culture of corruption in the service is unlikely”.
However, Colin Moses, national chairman of the Prison Officers Association (POA), said he found the Prison Services’ attitude “amazing”.
“It is vital that the underlying problems which fuel these criminal and professional acts have to be addressed,” he said, and called for improvements in the way prison officers were security checked and vetted, and the return of national recruitment of staff.
“If alleged corruption exists on the scale identified within the report we must not ignore the fact that the Prison Service now holds a significant number of terrorist prisoners and foreign nationals,” he added.
“It is recognised that many of these prisoners have the support of radical organisations that have already caused chaos in many countries around the world.
“It therefore cannot be beyond reasonableness to expect that these prisoners may be involving staff in corrupt activities or recruiting people to breach the security systems of our prisons.”
