Organised criminal gangs who “corrupt” staff and enforce drug debts with violence hold such a huge influence over jails across England and Wales that it “keeps me awake at night”, the prisons minister has said.
James Timpson told the Guardian that Prison Service staff who worked with criminal gangs to smuggle drugs and contraband into jails were being targeted by a “beefed up” counter-corruption unit that last year prosecuted 37 officers.
