I worked undercover in one of UK’s most dangerous jails — without checks

For a while I linger near by to see if anything changes. There is no one on security by the scanners for at least half an hour, and several people working at the prison — including officers, support workers and a cleaner — walk inside without being searched.

I have only been in this job for a few days — a role I first applied for just a few weeks ago —but I already have access to prison keys. I use these to walk freely in and around the prisoner wings, inches from the inmates, who chat to me while I am working.

I could have anything on me — drugs, weapons or other illicit items that could be used to aid an escape — and I could easily pass these to a prisoner without anyone knowing.

• Exposed: HMP Bedford investigated over security lapses

Hired without vetting

During the past month, I have worked undercover at HMP Bedford, one of several prisons nationwide which are at risk of spiralling out of control.

With prisons dangerously close to capacity and short-staffing an urgent problem, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has been using agencies to help find new recruits.

In late January I applied via an agency to work at the prison in a temporary role as a prison contractor escort, also referred to as an operational support grade (OSG) escort.

Regular OSGs, who are hired directly by the MoJ, have increasingly been used at prisons in recent years, akin to how police community support officers (PCSOs) work alongside police officers.

Paul Morgan-Bentley found that agency recruits were not being vetted like prison staff hired directly by the Ministry of Justice

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE

OSGs wear uniforms like prison officers but have limited training. They cannot restrain prisoners and they do not carry handcuffs or truncheons. They are meant to have only limited contact with prisoners but there have been reports of understaffed prisons using OSGs for jobs that should only be done by fully trained officers.

Less than three weeks after applying via the agency, I was inside the prison for my first day. My role as a temporary OSG escort involved me escorting building contractors as they worked on refurbishments to the old Victorian jail, including in a central area on the prisoner wings. Even though HMP Bedford is particularly dangerous, with the highest rates of violent assaults on prison staff in the country, I began the job without being vetted as OSGs usually are when they are hired directly by the MoJ.

I was told I could start because I had passed a criminal record check. However, there had been no proper checks on me and my employment background, which would easily have shown that I am a journalist at The Times.

A ‘pandemic’ of unlocked doors and a prisoner escape

On my first day I had a few hours of training in a small windowless classroom inside the prison.

I was among a group of recruits for various roles including healthcare and education staff, construction workers and a new prison officer drafted in from another jail. We were taught how to use keys to different doors and gates and had our fingerprints taken, which we would use to access the keys when we started our shifts.

The instructor pleaded with us to remember to lock doors that we walked through after opening them. She said there had been a “pandemic” of staff leaving doors unlocked at HMP Bedford.

In July 2022 a prisoner who was meant to be under constant supervision managed to escape from the jail, which is in Bedford town centre, right by the main shopping area and just a few doors away from a sixth-form college.

Paul Morgan-Bentley went undercover at HMP Bedford as an OSG escort — who wear uniforms like prison officers but have very limited training

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE

The trainer spoke about the escape, describing how the prisoner had not done anything particularly clever to get through security. She said he had simply walked through a series of unlocked doors and that when he got to the front of the prison an OSG assumed he was a visitor and did not stop him from leaving. The prisoner had managed to take a bicycle from the prison workshop with him. He was found the same day by police and has since been given a two-month custodial sentence.

The trainer described other security problems. She said OSGs were at times being used for jobs meant for fully trained officers and described how she felt particularly uncomfortable because a female OSG had routinely been escorting two male sex offenders from their wing to a cleaning duty. She said that part of the route they used was not covered by CCTV and the OSG was doing this without being trained how to protect herself from attack.

“Like everything in the prison service, until it goes Pete Tong nothing will be done,” she said. “And you didn’t hear me say that.”

During the few hours of training, we were told about the prison’s layout and given basic instructions on security awareness, preventing corruption and staying calm if taken hostage. We were asked to sign a piece of paper listing items that we were banned from bringing into the prison and outlining how breaching these rules would be a criminal offence. But the trainer indicated that we might find the front gate security inconsistent, saying that at times there was “nobody there” to search people entering.

The following day I started my job and, within hours, I was using the prison keys to escort building contractors on my own as prisoners walked around us when they were out of their cells. Many of the inmates wore grey tracksuits and moved around in small groups. Some smoked, with mist from their vapes trailing behind them.

Fighting on the wings

During my time at HMP Bedford I kept a small notebook and pen in one of my uniform jacket pockets to take notes when I was alone, and I recorded a video diary when I was back in my car after my shifts to ensure my recollections were as clear as possible.

On my second day I had my first experience of a prisoner fight. The building contractors I was with were working on Bravo wing, which had been shut to prisoners. But when they needed tools or breaks, I and other OSG escorts would lead them outside through a small central area connecting two of the other wings, called Alpha and Charlie. Prisoners often roamed in this area when they were allowed on exercise breaks.

As I put my key into a gate to lead a large group of workers through this central area, a fight broke out on one of the wings. The gate was made of prison bars so we could see through.

Prison officers were rushing to contain the situation, shouting about a fight, and an alarm was going off. Prisoners on the wing opposite gathered to watch, cheering and goading the others.

A riot broke out inside the prison in 2016, during which prisoners took control of the wings for six hours

I kept the door locked, waiting for the area to be safe again, and reflected on how absurd it was that, just three weeks after applying for this job and on my first full day in the role, I was the person with the key, protecting the group behind me.

‘I very rarely get searched’

All staff and visitors entering the prison have to show ID or a work badge to an OSG at reception by the front door.

There is then airport-style security — called enhanced gate security (EGS) — which should mean that those going inside, and their belongings, are searched thoroughly for contraband such as drugs and weapons.

Prison security rules state that jail front gates are “a significant supply route for unauthorised items entering prisons” and that “the presence of unauthorised items within a prison, such as mobile phones, weapons and drugs, presents a major security threat”.

Before working at a prison I would have assumed that security would be at least as tight as at an airport. However, I found it wildly inconsistent at HMP Bedford.

On two out of the eight days that I worked at the prison there was no one searching people entering the prison when I arrived for my shifts in the morning.

This meant that I and other staff arriving at this time could just walk through the metal detector scanner and carry on even if it beeped, without any checks on what we were carrying. We did not have to put our belongings through the baggage scanner either.

On some other occasions when I entered the prison the staff on EGS said they had not been trained to search people or use the baggage scanners, so they just looked through the clothes I had chosen to remove and the belongings I showed them.

At other times, when EGS was fully staffed during the middle of the day, there were several officers or OSGs on security, the baggage scanners were being used, and I was asked questions about my belongings. At times I had to remove my shoes and was patted down and searched with a metal detector wand.

A member of staff said it was not uncommon to enter the prison without being searched in the mornings

ALAMY

One morning when I found no one on EGS, several building contractors were among those who entered the prison without searches. One of the builders later revealed to colleagues that he had brought in a smart watch. These are banned because some could be used by prisoners to connect to wifi, record and store data.

I kept notes of how I had repeated access to prisoners after I had walked into the prison without being searched. On one of these occasions I walked outside with a contractor and counted ten prisoners around us who were being escorted to a gym by one prison officer. I could so easily have passed on contraband without being spotted.

I asked my supervisor — an OSG escort who had been in the role for about a year — about his experiences with the front-door security. He said it was not uncommon for him to walk straight through with no one on security doing searches when he arrived in the mornings. “I very rarely get searched,” he said.

Prison security rules acknowledge that at times insufficient staffing might mean the gate searches have to be managed “according to risk”. However, they add: “The expectation is that all visitors and staff entering the prison will be subject to enhanced gate search procedures.”

The rules state that “all persons entering the prison via the gate” will be questioned about any unauthorised items before starting a “mandatory search process”, including removing belongings into trays, having them scanned in the x-ray machines, going through the arch scanner and having secondary searches if the scanner’s alarm goes off.

The rules also state that staff searching on the gate must be trained to use the archway metal detector and the x-ray baggage scanner.

Drugs, an ambulance, and an inmate dies

The prison officers’ main base on the wings was in an office in the central area where I often escorted contractors working in the jail.

Their office had a large transparent screen so they could see through and prisoners could see them. Some were in roles that required them to sit for most of the day at their computer screens. Occasionally some would leave to interact with prisoners, or help them with paperwork. Other officers spent most of their shifts on their feet, escorting prisoners or guarding the wings.

The officers’ presence in this central area did not prevent inmates openly smoking drugs just metres from them.

At about 3.15pm one day, as I walked to the wings with colleagues, there was a strong smell of marijuana or a similar drug coming from a cell right by this area. The prisoners did not seem to have much trouble getting drugs into the jail.

One day a prisoner had to be taken away by ambulance, apparently due to abuse of spice, a cheap synthetic cannabinoid that is popular in prisons and known as a “zombie drug” because of the way it can make users appear lifeless.

One of the prisoners died during the two weeks that I worked at HMP Bedford. The death, on the Friday of my first week, was announced to staff in a notice on the wall beside where we collected our keys. His name was given as Edward Hands.

I later learned that Edward, or Eddie to his friends and family, had died in the prison on the day before his 43rd birthday. He was a father of two children, aged 11 and 8. Eddie had serious health problems, a history of addiction and mental health conditions. He was imprisoned at HMP Bedford on remand in November, accused of stalking offences related to a former partner. He had initially been on bail but was moved to prison after it was alleged that he breached bail conditions.

In January he pleaded guilty at court to coercive controlling behaviour and battery. He was kept at HMP Bedford while awaiting sentencing.

Eddie’s parents told me that he had a heart condition and to manage this safely doctors had implanted a small device in his chest. He was meant to always have a monitor nearby that would pick up signals from his heart and alert if there were problems.

Eddie and his family repeatedly tried to get this machine into the prison to monitor his heart. On a prison “general application” form dated January 23, 2024, less than a month before his death, he had written: “I need to connect my heart monitor which is in reception urgently, I have asked four times now.”

A prison governor responded, stating that they were waiting for confirmation from a healthcare worker before this could be authorised, adding: “I will be in touch.” The monitor never arrived.

Eddie was found dead alone in his cell. There was no suggestion of self-harm. A coroner began an investigation on February 29 and there will be a full inquest in the coming months.

Stanley knives get into the prison

Every day that I worked in the prison, workmen arrived with dangerous tools. On one of my first days two of them were building a wall in the central wing area and two OSG escorts had to guard them. They used a large drill and a saw to cut metal studs, some almost three metres long.

My colleagues described how there had apparently been some debate among the prison’s governors as to whether or not this work should be done at night when the inmates were in their cells, presumably because of the obvious security risks, but it was allowed to go ahead.

I spent much of the day guarding the workmen. During one period, the other OSG escort with me was an 18-year-old who had been in the job for about a month. The workmen were told to continue even when prisoners were out of their cells and walking around us.

One of the prisoners approached me while they worked, saying quietly: “Can I have your tools? Come on!” I was friendly but said no.

Some builders were let in without checks on their tools until later in the day

ALAMY

During one break there were metal screws that had been left on the floor, luckily noticed and picked up by a cleaner. Another time, I found a large screw on the floor in this area and cleared it away before a prisoner could get hold of it.

Contractors with vans had to drive through a vehicle entrance to the prison. They would then be let into a secure garage area called the “vehicle lock” where they and their vans were meant to be searched thoroughly by OSGs, before a large electronic gate would open and allow them to drive on to the prison grounds. OSG escorts on temporary contracts in my role would then lock their vans and keep their keys until they were ready to leave.

One day I heard a builder talking to another contractor, saying he was reluctant to drive his van into the grounds because he had lots of tools inside, including Stanley knives, and he worried about them being confiscated. The other contractor told him not to worry as the searches he had experienced were basic, saying that the guards on duty usually gave up after seeing the mess in the back of his van and just let him drive through.

The builder then left the prison to get his van. When I saw him again later in the day I asked about the searches and he said they were not an issue. The Stanley knives had not been found.

At times the front gate security asked the OSG escorts to search the tools before they were allowed in, so they could be checked again throughout the day to ensure nothing had gone missing. But I found that this was done only very rarely.

Mostly the builders were let in and their tools were checked later in the day, with this being managed by a 19-year-old OSG escort who had been in the job for a few months. Many of the other OSG escorts were very young. We all had keys to security doors across the prison grounds, although they did not give us access to prisoner cells.

Colleagues often discussed security issues, including problems with vehicle searches. They said OSGs had recently failed a security test set by senior prison staff. Someone had been hidden inside a vehicle entering the prison to see if they could get inside without being found, they said, and the OSGs let the vehicle in without noticing the intruder.

On another occasion staff said an officer was given a test to dress in plain clothes inside HMP Bedford and put on a hard hat and a high visibility vest, like a building contractor, to see if he could then blag his way out of the prison without being stopped. They said he succeeded.

Squalid cells and sewage leaking on the floor

HMP Bedford is filthy. On one of my first days I had to go to the underground segregation unit for prisoners kept in cells alone. It had been raining and the floor at the entrance was flooded. A prisoner screamed from inside his cell that he was going to kill a governor.

HMP Bedford was found to be filthy and infested with rats and cockroaches during a recent inspection

As we walked outside between the wings there were often piles of rubbish — empty milk cartons, vapes and paper — just left without being cleared. Some cell windows were broken. From outside you could see that one part of a cell window was barely hanging on its hinges.

While I was undercover, HM Inspectorate of Prisons released its latest report into conditions at HMP Bedford. Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of prisons, said he was “very concerned about the ongoing problems at the jail” and that “some of the accommodation in Bedford was the worst I have seen”.

The report described “evidence of mould and infestation of rats and cockroaches” and how the segregation unit was a “disgrace”, adding: “On very wet days, raw sewage covered the floor and the cells were dark, damp and dilapidated.”

Inspectors found sandbags in the segregation unit to combat floods of sewage after periods of heavy rain

I read the report on my phone in the car after one of my shifts and, generally, nodded along with the damning findings. The report mentioned the prisoner escape in 2022, how “some key systems and strategies had fallen into disarray” and that there had been “several serious concerns about the security of the prison”. It reported a recent audit by the prison and probation service’s security team, which “rated the prison’s security systems as unsatisfactory” and referenced a survey suggesting that one in four of the prisoners said illicit drugs were easy to get hold of, a proportion typical for this kind of jail.

However, the report stated that “security systems were proportionate to the security threat of the population”. Inspectors have to be careful not to publicise some specific security problems, so share these with prison governors privately. But I was still surprised that inspectors had not publicly reported on some of the security issues that I had found while undercover.

The day that the report came out happened to be one of the days when I had walked into the prison in the morning without anyone searching me.

The following day a colleague and I who were doing checks first thing in the morning discovered that a security gate had been left wide open close to one of the prisoner wings. It had apparently been left unlocked during the previous night. Another of the OSG escorts told me that he had recently found three doors in a row all unlocked.

There have long been known security issues at HMP Bedford. In November 2016 there was a riot inside the prison, during which prisoners armed themselves with improvised weapons, started fires and took control of the wings for six hours.

Mohammad Yasin, the Labour MP for Bedford, has regularly raised concerns about the prison, including telling parliament in 2019 that residents had faced “daily intrusions onto their property by criminals smuggling contraband through their gardens over the prison’s wall”.

Months with no thorough checks on agency recruits

On one of my last days in the prison, I noticed a sign in an area used by the building contractors, stating that they “must have been vetted and have prison LV1 security clearance to work on this project site”. However, the ones I spoke to said they had not had this clearance but were still allowed to work at the prison.

Before quitting my job, I emailed the recruitment agency that hired me to check whether I had “LV1 security clearance”. The recruiter responded that while I had completed a criminal record check, I still required “full clearance”. By this point I had been working at the prison for almost two weeks.

She then introduced me by email to the prison’s vetting co-ordinator so I could organise to have my “pre-employment screening” while continuing to work at the prison. When I asked the co-ordinator how long it usually took for vetting to be completed, she replied: “I have known them go through in as little as three weeks; I’ve also had them ongoing after four months.”

When I spoke to other recruits, they said they had also started their jobs within days of applying via an agency and without completing prison staff vetting.

In response to the undercover investigation, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary and lord chancellor, has ordered an investigation into prison contractor vetting, seeking “urgent clarification” on whether the processes used are appropriate.

The MoJ said that all jail staff and visitors were “regularly and randomly searched” and there was no evidence that contractor tools had got into the hands of prisoners. It said that last month security scanners at HMP Bedford were in use 91 per cent of the time during “core” hours. However, it said that it was reviewing security staffing to ensure that anyone manning security scanners was “adequately trained”. The department said the jail had a “zero-tolerence approach” to drugs and those found with them would be punished, and that “OSGs should not escort prisoners without the presence of an officer”, adding: “This is being addressed with leaders at HMP Bedford.”

The MoJ said the undercover reporter had been briefly employed as a temporary agency worker, with restricted access and duties. It said such agency workers had an “abridged vetting process” and that directly employed OSGs had more training and normal prison staff vetting. It said that the sign the reporter saw stating that contractors required LV1 security clearance was “out of date”.

It said there were 659 prison contractor escorts nationwide, about 1.69 per cent of all prison staff members. A spokesman said that contractors at HMP Bedford had the correct level of security clearance and that fully trained officers were in attendance whenever prisoners were present. It said it had increased prison staffing levels and that it had “embarked on the largest prison building programme since the Victorian era — creating 20,000 modern places”.

After HMP Bedford was put on urgent notification last year, the prison service has been working to improve security at the jail, including reviewing and updating the local security strategy “to make sure it is fit for purpose”. The MoJ said that the prison and probation ombudsman investigates all deaths in custody and it would be inappropriate to comment further. It said the prisoner escape in 2022 was the only escape from HMP Bedford in the past two years.

An MoJ spokesman said: “The enhanced airport-style security in place at HMP Bedford and other closed jails is there solely due to this government’s £100 million investment in tough new controls — including rolling out x-ray scanners, tightening staff searches and recruiting hundreds more drug detection dogs to make our prisons safer.”

Hays, the recruitment agency that hired the reporter, said it had complied with the MoJ’s vetting process, which requires OSG escorts to have full enhanced vetting within their first 12 weeks in the role.

A spokeswoman said: “Despite procedure being followed in this case, we will be conducting a review of our recruitment process for the supply of these types of roles.”