Well being employee at coronary heart of largest jail drug-smuggling ring is jailed for 10 years
A psychological well being nurse who began a relationship with an inmate earlier than flooding a jail with contraband has been jailed for greater than 10 years for her half in what’s believed to be the UK’s largest ever jail medication conspiracy.
Seventeen individuals have been convicted over the smuggling of medication, weapons and cellphones into HMP Lindholme, a Class C jail, close to Doncaster, between 2018 and 2020.
On Friday, Decide Kirstie Watson handed down sentences totalling nearly 90 years for 16 defendants.
The seventeenth defendant, William Francis, shall be sentenced at a later date.
Sheffield Crown Courtroom heard six of the defendants had been serving prisoners who coordinated the smuggling community and bought the prohibited gadgets to different inmates, whereas others had been companions, dad and mom and siblings who had been recruited to smuggle the gadgets into the jail and launder the proceeds by their financial institution accounts.
Sexual relationship
Amy Hatfield, who was employed as a psychological well being assist employee on the jail, grew to become “infatuated” with inmate Joseph Whittingham in 2018 and the pair began a sexual relationship earlier than he recruited her to participate within the conspiracy, it was stated.
Whittingham, 35, had a “main function” within the operation and likewise recruited his spouse Lucy and father Paul to obtain funds for the contraband.
Decide Watson stated he “exploited” Hatfield’s emotions for him and organized for medication and different banned gadgets to be delivered to her.
The decide informed Hatfield: “When (Whittingham) first expressed emotions for you, as an alternative of reporting it to your supervisors as you had been skilled to do, you embraced it.”
The connection escalated to “sexual exercise throughout the jail and the exchanging of photos”, the court docket heard.
Decide Watson informed Hatfield the connection was “a major breach of belief” and outlined how she “abused your place to convey prohibited gadgets” into the jail “for monetary acquire”.
“It will need to have been clear to you the affect that elevated drug use was having, and but you continued to flood HMP Lindholme with medication and telephones. You even introduced in a knife,” the decide stated.
Hatfield, 38, was stopped and searched as she arrived for work in October 2019 by law enforcement officials who discovered she was carrying £1 million of contraband together with MDMA, baggage of ketamine, spice paper, vials of testosterone, anabolic steroids, cellphones, telephone equipment, tobacco and different pharmaceuticals. She additionally had 4 Ribena bottles along with her, which contained round two litres of liquid spice.
Affect of medication
A subsequent search of the psychological well being unit the place she labored discovered an additional litre of spice.
Within the months and years after her arrest, officers found a “extremely advanced prison community” working inside HMP Lindholme.
Decide Watson stated the variety of incidents within the jail the place inmates had been discovered underneath the affect of medication “considerably elevated” throughout Hatfield’s time there, and went down after her arrest, though the conspiracy did proceed after she left.
Hatfield, 38, of HMP New Corridor, pleaded responsible to conspiracy to provide class A medicine, conspiracy to provide class B medication, conspiracy to convey medication into jail, conspiracy to convey telephones into jail, conveying knives into jail and cash laundering.
She has been sentenced to 10 years and two months in jail.
