Concerns over inexperienced staff at prison notorious for flings between inmates and guards

The Independent Monitoring Board said staffing was “much improved” but more than 40 per cent of band 3 (the starting grade) prison officers at HMP Berwyn, Wrexham, had less than twelve months service. The jail holds 2,000 men including inmates from Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham and members of organised crime gangs.

Earlier this year the Prison Service said there were no sackings or resignations for inappropriate relationships with Berwyn prisoners in 2023.

Anti-corruption training had been given to more than 500 workers in a bid to stop affairs. Previously 18 women staff had been sacked or resigned for getting too close to inmates – adding to a staff shortage.

In December 2022 a corrupt prison officer who fell in love with a prisoner wept as she was jailed for eight months. Jennifer Gavan, 27, of Llay, Wrexham, pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office between April and July 2020 at Berwyn.

She was accused of entering into an inappropriate relationship with prisoner Alex Coxon, accepting £150 to bring a mobile phone into the jail and communicating with him via a phone held illegally in Berwyn.

In 2019 a guard who had a fling with a “dangerous” inmate was locked up for twelve months.

Numerous phone calls, some sexually explicit, took place between criminology and psychology graduate Ayshea Gunn, 27, and Khuram Razaq, 29. He was an inmate at Berwyn serving twelve years for conspiracy to rob. She smuggled in a pair of knickers for him inside her bra.

Mold Crown Court heard in Gunn’s bedroom were snaps of the pair kissing and hugging, some mobile phone pictures taken in his cell.

The same year prison officer Emily Watson, 26, was jailed after performing a sex act on an inmate in his cell on Christmas Day.