Prison staff accused of criminal offences at work are being allowed to quietly resign or transfer to avoid police probes, a Daily Mail investigation shows.
The shocking findings come amid a prison service crisis following a series of wrongful releases that have left justice secretary David Lammy scrambling for answers.
We discovered bosses at HMP Feltham failed to report officers accused of violence, destroying evidence of crimes and inappropriate relationships with inmates to police.
A source at Feltham, Britain’s most violent jail, said management ‘covered up’ episodes of serious misconduct to avoid adverse publicity for the prison once it was placed in special measures by the watchdog.
Two officers accused of beating up a young offender then destroying the body-worn camera which captured the assault resigned days before their misconduct hearing and never faced police questioning.
Another female officer reported by colleagues for having inappropriate relationships with inmates quietly transferred to another prison – the same one her love interest criminals were moved to.
At her new jail, in Wetherby, she was convicted of having sexual relationships with the inmates.
The astonishing revelations come as a watchdog concluded last year that Feltham, in southwest London, both a young offenders institution and prison for males aged 18-35, was the most violent jail in the country.
In 2019, it was subject to an urgent notification from the Prisons Inspectorate and a follow-up inspection in August found the levels of violence were still as high as anywhere in the country.
Last night, former prison governor and senior Home Office official Ian Acheson said the Mail’s findings showed HMP Feltham should be closed down.
‘The only way to really change anything is to shut it down and start again with a completely new culture,’ he said. ‘The place is beyond redemption.’
The shocking findings come amid a prison service crisis following a series of wrongful releases – that have left justice secretary David Lammy scrambling for answers
Prison officer Jordan Trainor was the subject of multiple intelligence reports over inappropriate relationships with two inmates at Feltham. Despite this, she was permitted to transfer to a prison in Wetherby – where she was convicted of having sexual relationships with inmates.
Migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu (L) was wrongly freed from HMP Chelmsford last month instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre. Just days later, on October 29, Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, (R) was wrongly released from HMP Wandsworth, also in south west London.
Astonishingly, the Mail can also reveal that since the 2019 urgent notification:
- A prison officer allegedly kicked one of the jail’s chickens to death.
- The jail’s second most senior governor made sexual remarks about a female officer’s genitals – but was not sacked.
- A prison officer was caught allegedly bringing in drugs and phones for an offender to run a ‘prison shop’ after the prisoner was hospitalised by other offenders who robbed the goods.
- A female prison officer allegedly had an affair with a murderer who she met at Feltham then continued to visit when he was transferred to HMP Belmarsh.
- One prison officer was jailed for historic rape and another for possession of indecent images of children.
One of the most shocking incidents uncovered by The Mail took place in June 2021, after a 17-year-old inmate convicted of killing a taxi driver launched hot water over a prison officer.
According to sources, two prison officers then ended up in a brawl with the boy and punched him in the face in self-defence.
Their bodyworn cameras were not activated but a device worn by a colleague captured the scuffle.
Prison sources said an internal investigation found the two female officers had pressured their colleague to hand over his body worn camera, which they then duly destroyed to hide the evidence of their violence.
No referrals were made to the police and the women resigned prior to their misconduct hearing.
Meanwhile, sources said another female officer, Jordan Trainor, was the subject of multiple intelligence reports over inappropriate relationships with two inmates at Feltham.
Despite this, she quietly followed the same young men to Wetherby Young Offenders Institute.
While working at Wetherby, West Yorks, she was caught having sexual relationships with the two teenage inmates, sending them sexual texts, printing explicit photos of herself on the office printer and allowing them to grope her while at work.
Trainor, a married mother, was jailed for 18 months in 2021.
The Ministry of Justice said staff could not find a record of internal complaints about Trainor.
But three separate sources confirmed to the Mail that multiple intelligence reports had been submitted about her behaviour.
In 2021, it is alleged that another Feltham prison officer kicked a chicken so violently that it died a few days later.
She was said to have ‘done keepy-ups’ with the therapy chicken on the prison’s Alpine Wing.
The female officer was charged with causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal but the case was discontinued due to a discrepancy with dates.
In 2023, a complaint was made about governor Dean Donaghue, who had been overheard asking a colleague if he would perform a sex act on prison officer Laura Reader ‘for a quid.’
Donaghue admitted he had made the comment in 2018, and at a fast-track disciplinary hearing he was given formal guidance and asked to send a written apology to Ms Reader.
Ms Reader, who left her role due to ill health and was awarded compensation, said the comment was symptomatic of a bullying and misogynistic culture in the prison service.
The mother-of-five said: ‘I nearly took my own life because of the way he made me feel; I was humiliated and felt degraded and worthless.
‘After this I couldn’t face working for an employer that allowed this sort of behaviour towards women. I didn’t feel safe.
‘And this man still has a senior role in the prison service. It just about sums up what a mess the system is.
‘Perhaps if they concentrated more on having a safe, functioning prison instead of protecting their own reputations and chasing promotions then the service wouldn’t be in such a sorry state.’
Mr Donaghue, who is the subject of an unrelated ongoing tribunal, remains in post as deputy governor – head of the prison’s B wing.
On another occasion, a female officer was found by an internal investigation to be having an inappropriate relationship with Arif Biomy, who was later jailed for life for stabbing a rival gang member to death.
The pair met while the officer was working at Feltham, then Biomy went to her home when he was freed.
When he was later convicted of the murder of 16-year-old Alex Smith, the prison officer visited him in Belmarsh prison.
A Ministry of Justice source said Scotland Yard was consulted but did not take the matter on.
The incident was one of an ‘epidemic of sexual misconduct between female officers and prisoners’ that was ‘happening in part because the prison service is recruiting the wrong people for these roles,’ Mr Acheson said.
The former prison governor, who also led a review into extremism in prisons and advises the United Nations, said it was clear that criminal behaviour had been covered up at Feltham.
‘The statistics that we actually see are being hugely massaged by quietly getting rid of embarrassing problems without making much fuss,’ he added.
‘All this is an indicator of just how far the standards in the prison service have plummeted over the last 15 years.
‘Discipline has fallen to pieces, and these issues are papered over by those higher up, with management at prisons often made up of a cartel of people who have come up together, are fiercely defensive and care more about protecting their own reputations than anything else.
‘What you see now is that the use of force is through the roof because the staff often are simply not equipped to deescalate things with hardened criminals and manage these high pressure environments.’
HMP Feltham in southwest London was found to be Britain’s most violent prison. The Mail has uncovered evidence that prison staff accused of criminal offences were permitted to quietly resign or transfer to another jail to avoid a police probe
A spokesman from the Ministry of Justice said: ‘Most prison staff are honest and hardworking, and our investment in the prison service Counter-Corruption unit is helping us catch more of the small minority who are not.
‘Where officers fall below our high standards, we do not hesitate to take tough action.’
The Mail’s investigation comes as the prison service lurches from one crisis to another.
Migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was wrongly freed from HMP Chelmsford last month instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre.
Just days later, on October 29, Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was wrongly released from HMP Wandsworth, also in south west London.
Then, on November 3, inmate Billy Smith, 35, was also accidentally freed from the same prison.
These two blunders came after Mr Lammy had claimed to have imposed ‘stringent checks’ on prisons following the release of Kebatu.
The number of prisoners released in error stood at 262 in the year to March 2025, about 22 a month.
This marks a rise of 128 per cent on the previous year and is more than double that of any year in the past decade.
