An urgent investigation has begun into prison security after an undercover journalist was hired at one of the country’s most dangerous jails and was then able to walk inside and interact with prisoners without security searches.
Last month a Times reporter was hired by an agency to work at HMP Bedford amid a nationwide staffing shortage.
On two out of eight days that he worked at the prison, there was no one manning the security scanners at the front entrance when he arrived for work. This allowed him and several others to walk inside the jail and through to prisoner wings without even the most basic searches.
Even when there were staff on security, they often said they had not been trained to use scanners
