This article originally appeared on VICE UK
In case you were wondering, if you send a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey to an inmate and also happen to be a nurse who worked in the prison where they're incarcerated, you could wind up banned. This week, 40-year-old nurse Kimberly Hinde picked up a one-year ban for misconduct in public office for doing as much. Of course it wasn't just the book that ended up costing Hinde her job, but the fact she'd been found engaging in a relationship with the inmate in question, back in October 2013.
It seems Hinde isn't the only one: even the most cursory glance online can open up pages worth of stories featuring prison staff getting romantically involved with inmates—and often paying the price for it by ending up on the other side of the cell.
Power can be intoxicating in the right situations, but what actually seems to be behind the ubiquity of these cases? In normal circumstances, a murderer doesn't seem that attractive a partner—we have a tendency to base our perceptions of people's personalities on their past behavior, and, as a recent Invisibilia podcast episode explored, that can often entail a quiet revulsion towards convicted violent criminals. It doesn't seem like the prime situation in which to feel turned on.
Elie Godsi, a consultant clinical psychologist and author of Violence and Society: Making Sense of Madness and Badness, disagrees. "You've got to understand that people aren't murderers all the time, they do things under certain circumstances. They aren't always like that. So they won't see them in the circumstances under which they were violent."
Could that be the case for Anita Whittaker? The 53-year-old prison officer was sentenced to 15 months in jail last May after having an affair with an inmate incarcerated at HM Wormwood Scrubs in London. Whittaker was caught exchanging love letters and amorous texts with Kazadi Kongolo, 35, who'd been jailed in 1999 when he was found guilty of stabbing a teenager to death.
But Godsi also attributes some of this sort of attraction it to "forbidden fruit." "It's really about being excited or attracted by the fact that something is forbidden so it becomes their little secret, something only they know about and which no one else could possibly understand. A 'we love each other against all obstacles' kind of thing."
But what makes staff—guards, nurses—actually invest in these relationships? A lot of the effort is rooted in fantasy, according to Godsi. You can see his point. After all, these couples don't have to contend with the libido-wreckers that ordinary ones have to. They exist in what he calls a "suspended-reality environment, at one level."
He goes on: "You don't live with them, you don't watch them pick their nose, you don't watch them go to the toilet, you don't argue about who does the dishes. It's completely unreal. They're seeing each other in a very limited environment so they can be at their best because what they see of each other is limited."
It's a relationship formed in a completely different boundary-setting that can't survive in the real world. Almost invariably, it's going to end in tears.
It's for this reason that Godsi's skeptical that these sorts of couples couldn't necessarily thrive in the 'real' world. That's not to say that all don't, though—just take this female prison guard who says she married an inmate convicted of second-degree manslaughter. They first got together in 2002, before getting married about three years later. That case feels more like an anomaly, as far as Godsi's concerned.
"When people come out and try and have a relationship, it's extremely unlikely it's going to be successful because the strains of being in the real world kicks in. It's a relationship formed in a completely different boundary-setting that can't survive in the real world. Almost invariably, it's going to end in tears."
Obviously, a skewed power dynamic can play its part too, and can often vary depending on the gender of those in the relationship. A 2012 Ministry of Justice study on the family backgrounds of 1,435 newly sentenced prisoners—of whom 1,303 were male—found that 24 percent had been in care at some point in their childhood.
The study also found that 41 percent of the convicts surveyed had observed violence at home while 29 percent had experienced abuse. For male inmates at least, that represents the opportunity for straight female officers to fill an emotional void, as per Godsi's reasoning. "A female prison officer may sense that and may want to make that better in a maternal way," he says. "They sense the vulnerabilities and distress and difficulties the inmate has. They want to mother them. They want to heal them. But I don't think they're setting themselves up as a savior."
Perhaps that's why the majority of cases that hit the headlines more often than not seem to be female prison staff. Prisoner officer Dawn Sheard was jailed for 10 months in May after being found to be sexually involved with an inmate while on duty, while in 2012, newspapers reported that prison officer Zanib Khan had juggled exchanging sexually charged calls and letters with four convicts.
WATCH: Jailed for Life for Minor Crimes – the UK's Forgotten Prisoners
For women inmates, though, the power imbalance can be fraught with feeling pressure to create a transactional relationship based on the inmate earning perks and privileges. An inmate speaking anonymously to the Guardian in 2009 said that she'd regularly perform blow jobs in exchange for 'rewards"—namely vodka and drugs. When asked if the relationship was consensual, she replied: "In a way, I suppose. I knew what I was doing; but I wouldn't have looked at him on the outside and only did it for the burn and the vodka. He was a bit arrogant and there were times when I fantasized about biting his cock off."
Another woman interviewed in the piece suggested that by not giving in to the staff's advances, she could scupper her chances of an being let out earlier. "It was part and parcel of prison life," she said. "If you are not going to buy into the approaches made by staff, you will not progress, you will not get the good jobs, or get on the courses that will help you get early release." Essentially, it's as Godsi says: "You can't give consent properly in a relationship where there's a power imbalance."
As for Hinde, she'll be able to return to nursing in a year's time, but rest assured, there'll be more like her: high on power, fueled by fantasy, and in a complex emotional web that will endlessly make for red-top newspaper fodder.
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