A prison employee has been sentenced after illegally accessing files belonging to some of Britain's most notorious offenders, including nurse Lucy Letby, Rose West, and doctor Harold Shipman.
Courtney Harrison, 27, exploited her administrative position at HMP Moorland in Doncaster to examine the personal records of the country's most infamous criminals, in what the crown court termed a 'grave breach of trust'.
Those whose files she unlawfully viewed included Britain's deadliest serial killer Harold Shipman and the notorious child murderer Rose West. She also examined the records of nurse-turned-baby killer Lucy Letby, 36, and Damien Bendall, 36, who savagely killed two women and children with a claw hammer.
Unauthorised access and data sharing
Sheffield Crown Court was told how Harrison also retrieved and shared confidential information from the prison files of convicted cash machine thief George Tunney, which later appeared on his mobile device, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Harrison was charged with misconduct in public office and causing a computer to perform a function to secure/enable unauthorised access to a program, offences to which she pleaded guilty at a previous hearing.
She broke down in tears in the dock on Tuesday (July 7) as she received a 21-month prison term. Judge Jeremy Richardson KC denounced her conduct as "comprehensively wrong".
Judge condemns breach of trust
He stated: "Prison officers, and officers within the prison, have reposed within them a very considerable responsibility and trust. When an individual breaches that trust, punishment must follow, and an example has to be made of them."
Judge Richardson deemed the most egregious aspect of Harrison's conduct to be her decision to divulge confidential information about inmate George Tunney, a friend of a friend, upon request.
The details shared by Harrison, who was 23 years old at the time of the offences, subsequently "ended up in Tunney's cell," Judge Richardson declared.
He continued: "She had some sort of connection to Tunney. It appears she prevailed upon you as your friend, knowing that you had access to confidential information about prisoners, to look up certain details relating to Tunney."
"You looked up that information and sent it on an email to her. The email was found on a device he improperly had within his cell. The information you disclosed was there."
No evidence of escape assistance
Judge Richardson noted that Tunney later fled from the prison, before eventually being tracked down and apprehended. He asserted there was no evidence to suggest Harrison had "assisted" him in his escape.
Addressing Harrison directly, he said: "It would be a very serious matter if there was any evidence revealing that you had materially assisted a prisoner to abscond. Your prison sentence would be measured in several years."
Nosiness towards high-profile inmates
The additional aspect of Harrison's misconduct, Judge Richardson clarified, related to her "nosiness" concerning high-profile inmates. Judge Richardson declared: "You accessed in 2022 and 2023 a number of personal records of very high profile criminals who were serving long sentences...all of whom were notorious criminals."
"You accessed the records of at least four others who were in prisons in the north of England, one of whom was a Category A prisoner."
Judge Richardson recognised that while no concrete damage had stemmed from Harrison's viewing of these notorious criminals' files, her conduct overall constituted a "very serious matter".
"You were, in effect, dancing around the edge of a volcano. That volcano erupted, and here you are in the Crown Court facing a sentence."
Harrison's behaviour was eventually uncovered, resulting in her detention. Judge Richardson noted he had weighed various mitigating circumstances in Harrison's case, including her age when the offences took place.
Nevertheless, Judge Richardson declared: "What you did was comprehensively wrong. To access the private criminal and prison records of past and current prisoners. It was a grave breach of trust."
