SEX in our Prisons

Mugshots for former prison guards Emily Watson, Ayshea Gunn and Jennifer Gavan . 

 (View Finder Pictures)

At least 18 female guards in the U.K.'s "cushiest prison" have reportedly been fired or resigned amid a flurry of sordid sexual accusations — including claims of sex inside cells and one guard smuggling her underwear to an inmate.

HMP Berwyn, which is also Britain's largest facility, has been hit with various claims of illicit affairs and inappropriate relationships between guards and inmates since it opened in 2017, with three former workers sentenced in a 2019 scandal, the Mirror reported.

The publication obtained documents about the exits obtained through information requests showed the inappropriate relationships were more widespread than had been publicly known.

British outlets are reporting that the 18 women who were fired or resigned from a single jail is a "record," noting that since 2019, a total of 31 women across England and Wales have been fired from jails for intimate relationships with inmates.

Former HMP Berwyn guard Jennifer Gavan, for example, was sentenced to eight months in jail last year after pleading guilty to misconduct. She accepted £150 — or about $180 — from inmate Alex Coxon to smuggle him a cellphone, which they later used to exchange raunchy photos, according to the Mirror. Coxon was in prison for robbery.

Mark Fairhurst, chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, pinned blame on the recent spate of affairs and firings on "the wrong kind of women" getting hired.

"Staff being recruited don’t have face-to-face interviews… it’s all done on Zoom," Fairhurst told the Mirror. "A lot of people getting these jobs don’t have enough life experience and are susceptible to conditioning from prisoners."  READ MORE...

Denmark Rents Prisons From Kosovo

AFPImage,Denmark will be renting 300 cells at Gjilan prison in Kosovo


Kosovo has agreed to rent 300 prison cells to Denmark to ease overcrowding in the Scandinavian country's jails.


Denmark will pay an annual fee of €15m (£12.8m) for an initial period of five years, and will also help fund green energy in the country.


The rented cells are meant to house convicted criminals from non-EU countries due to be deported from Denmark after their sentences.  Danish laws would apply to any prisoners in the rented cells.  Kosovo has between 700 and 800 unused prison spaces.


The two governments signed a "political declaration" of intent on Monday which will run for an initial period of five years, a joint statement said.


EPAImage,The agreement signed on Monday runs initially for five years


The Balkan state unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008.


In total, Kosovo is due to receive a total of €210m over the next 10 years for renting the prison in Gjilan, some 50km (30 miles) from the capital, Pristina, from 2023. Danish ministers were due to visit the jail on Tuesday.


"[The agreement] will create space in our prisons and ease the pressure on our prison officers at the same time as it also sends a clear signal to third-country nationals sentenced to deportation: Your future does not lie in Denmark, and you must therefore not serve time here," Danish Justice Minister Nick Haekkerup said in a statement.  READ MORE...

Three Squares and a Room

In the United States of America, our prison population is 2,300,000 and the average cost per inmate is $35,...  the cost to maintain our prison is the burden of taxpayers and as of the writing of this article only 45 of 50 States have prisons...  even though all States have jails in which people are kept for crimes until they are sentenced...

But, the bigger question here is not so much whether it is right or wrong to keep people in prison who have committed crimes, but to take another person's life by having a DEATH PENALTY.  In 2020, there were 2,553 DEATH ROW INMATES.  In case you are interested, it costs $1.26 million per inmate to implement the death penalty which includes the cost of a trial, jail time, and the actual execution.  And...  the median cost to keep an inmate in jail until they are released is $740,000.

While there is a rather large price tag to put an inmate to death, the greater question here is the MORAL IMPLICATIONS of killing another person, even after they have killed one or more individuals which landed them in jail in the first place.  Of course, there is also the facts surrounding the case and how terrible or horrific the actual crime was or was not.

Should we take another person's life?