Police are investigating a shocking video showing a female prison officer having sex with an inmate behind bars at HMP Wandsworth.
The woman is seen wearing uniform during the explicit clip, which begins with her performing a sex act on an unidentified prisoner at the Category A jail in south-west London.
The footage, which understands to be recent, then shows her having sex with the prisoner while his cellmate films on a mobile phone. Footage of the cell shows a TV and piles of clothes heaped over a bunk bed.
The friend who is smoking while recording says: ‘Guys we’ve made history, this is what I’m telling you.’
The officer’s radio, left on a side table, crackles constantly with her colleagues heard on the other channels above the din of the other prisoners on the landing unaware of what is going on in the cell.
At one point, someone appears to try to come into the cell, at which the man filming, can be heard saying to the person on the other side of the door ‘give me a minute, one second.’
The prisoner filming tells his friend to carry on and then pans the camera round momentarily and, grinning, says: ‘This is how we roll in Wandsworth.’
He then tells his friend having sex: ‘You know you’re gangster innit!’
Vanessa Frake, former head of security at Wormwood Scrubs, called the footage ‘shocking’.
She told : ‘This is what is completely wrong with the prison service in this day and age!
‘This woman disgraces not only herself, the uniform and the Prison Service.’
A Prison Service spokesman said: ‘Staff corruption is not tolerated and the former prison officer allegedly featured in this video has been reported to the police.
‘It would be inappropriate to comment further while they investigate.’
The Met Police said: ‘We have been made aware of a video allegedly filmed inside HMP Wandsworth.
‘A police investigation is under way. At this early stage there have been no arrests. We are in close contact with the Ministry of Justice.’
Ian Acheson, a former prison governor, said the footage raised serious security concerns.
‘If this footage is authentic and I’ve been assured it is, the problems confronting a likely new Labour administration go far beyond overcrowding,’ he told .
‘This is a national law enforcement agency. The idea that recruits to it would even contemplate let alone participate in sex acts is a stunning indictment of the utter chaos inside this prison. It won’t be an isolated incident.
‘The state is no longer in charge here. The security implications and corruption threat is obvious and as explicit as the flagrant acts. The widespread infiltration of illicit mobile phones will mean that this footage is seen by huge numbers of prisoners.
‘How are decent female officers supposed to feel safe to do their jobs in an environment where colleagues willingly participate in their sexual humiliation and exploitation?’
Two years ago a female prisoner officer faced a similar police probe over a jail sex tape.
The woman – in her 30s – was filmed performing a sex act on a male prisoner while in uniform.
More than 80 prison staff have been sacked or reprimanded since 2013 for having affairs with inmates, according to official statistics.
Ministry of Justice figures reveal that up until last year 59 female staff and 24 male workers were caught.
HMP Berwyn in North Wales had the worst record with 18 female staff found to have had relationships with inmates since the prison opened in 2017.
HMP Wandsworth was put into special measures after a damning report by chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor.
During an unannounced visit, he found eighty per cent of prisoners sharing cells designed for one person, 44 per cent testing positive for drugs and some going without showers for five days.
And despite the alleged escape of terror suspect Daniel Khalife last year, he said security remained a ‘serious concern’, with staff on the ‘chaotic’ wings frequently unable to accurately account for the whereabouts of their prisoners.
Built more than 170 years ago, Wandsworth is one of the oldest and most famous prisons in the country. It has had its fair share of high-profile inmates, from Oscar Wilde to, more recently, tennis star turned bankrupt Boris Becker.
In his warning to ministers calling for the category B jail to be placed in emergency measures, Mr Taylor described an atmosphere among prisoners ‘characterised by a degree of despondency that I have not come across in my time as Chief Inspector’.
He said staff are hampered by a lack of experience, poor management and a ‘poor or non-existence relationship’ with prisoners.
He added that many are suffering from high levels of ‘burn-out’, with a third unavailable for work each day.
Violence is an acute problem inside the jail, with more than 10 assaults on staff every week. The population – which numbered 1,364 two years ago – had risen this month to 1,513.
‘Wanno’ – as HMP Wandsworth is known by its inmates – was where former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker spent his first few weeks after being jailed for hiding £2.5m of assets and loans in a bankruptcy fraud case.
Becker, who was later moved to Huntercombe prison in Oxfordshire, said being a famous tennis player meant nothing in a place where he was surrounded by ‘murderers, by drug dealers, by rapists, by people smugglers, by dangerous criminals’.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast: ‘You fight every day for survival. Quickly, you have to surround yourself with the tough boys, as I would call it, because you need protection.’
The brutal realities of life inside the jail were exposed by ex-prisoner Chris Atkins in a book serialised by The Mail on Sunday.
Wandsworth hit the headlines last year with the alleged escape of 22-year-old terror suspect Daniel Khalife, who is said to have strapped himself to the underside of a Bidfood delivery truck with a makeshift harness made from prison bedsheets.
The former British Army soldier was originally arrested in January on terrorism charges after plotting a fake bomb hoax at his army barracks at MoD Stafford and he is also accused of spying for an enemy state, which is understood to be Iran.
Khalife, who will stand trial this year, denies one charge of escape, one of committing an act prejudicial to the state, one of eliciting information about members of the Armed Forces and another of perpetrating a bomb hoax.