A female prison officer who sent more than 4,000 flirty messages to an inmate has been sentenced to one year behind bars.
Toni Cole, 29, was convicted of sharing 4,369 intimate messages with a con at Northamptonshire’s new ‘super-prison’ HMP Five Wells.
Appearing before Northampton Crown Court, Cole was also found to have partaken in 18 video calls with the inmate whilst engaging in ‘contact which was s£xualised or flirtatious’.
The court also heard how the 29-year-old would sit on the inmate’s lap and kiss him, and even on occasion alert him of cell searches in advance.
The offences occurred between December 9, 2022, and January 25, 2023, before Cole’s misconduct was uncovered by bosses at the Category C prison.
Pleading guilty to misconduct in public office, Cole was ordered to pay a £187 surcharge in addition to her one-year prison sentence.
She is the second officer in as many years to be convicted of misconduct in public office at the same Wellingborough jail.
Last summer, Rachel Stanton, 31, received a suspended sentence after being involved in her own inmate fling.
The trainee officer, who is a mother-of-five, was found to have been romantically involved with armed robber Edwin Poole.
On that occasion, prison staff found a number of intimate images and a love letter in Poole’s cell, with CCTV also catching the pair entering a prison storeroom for over an hour.