Senior female prison officer Tracy Boateng, 27, was arrested after colleagues found footage on her body-worn camera showing her with Vincent Ojo at HMP Pentonville in North London
Footage shows the moment a senior female prison officer kissed a drug dealer inmate while laughing and joking with him at a jail. Tracy Boateng, 27, was arrested after colleagues found footage on her body-worn camera of her posing for a selfie with Vincent Ojo, Snaresbrook Crown Court was told.
She could be heard telling the heroin dealer to say “cheese” as she held up two fingers while Ojo stuck his tongue out. Other clips caught Boateng using sexualised language with the prisoner and hugging and kissing him in a jail office, the court heard. The mother of a three-month-old daughter appeared in court on Monday to be sentenced for a single count of misconduct in a public office.
Judge Caroline English said that it was only the fact Boateng was the sole carer for such a young child that had saved her from prison.
Judge English said: “I cannot emphasise enough just how serious this offence is. As a senior prison officer you held a position of authority and trust and were expected to discharge the duties by upholding prison rules. You knowingly breached those conditions with a prisoner who was under your supervision.”
But the judge added: “You are the mother of a very young baby, you are still breastfeeding that baby and you are the sole carer. One thing is certain, your child is a total innocent and the impact of your incarceration on such a young baby would be significant and potentially extremely harmful. It is for that reason, and that reason alone, that I am persuaded to take a wholly exceptional course and to suspend this sentence.”
Wearing mauve cotton trousers and a white blouse, Boateng remained impassive in the dock flanked by a female guard as she was handed a 12 month suspended sentence. She had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to having an inappropriate relationship with Ojo at HMP Pentonville in North London between February 25 and April 19 last year.
Outlining the case against her on Monday, prosecutor Laura Kenyon said Boateng had joined the prison service as a graduate entrant in 2020. The defendant had obtained 83% in her anti-corruption training exam after she was taught to be “friendly but not friends” with inmates, Ms Kenyon said.
The prosecutor added that the defendant was in “a position of trust with an obligation to uphold prison rules” who had “deliberately engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Mr Ojo”. Boateng, of Dagenham, East London, was caught in April 2024 after an intelligence analyst investigating an unrelated matter found video on her body-worn camera of laughing and joking with Ojo, 34, on the G-wing of the prison.
Further examination of her camera revealed the pair had met a number of times in an office Boateng used between March and April 2024 when she filmed herself hugging and kissing the prisoner. Ms Kenyon said: “On one occasion Ms Boateng appeared to reveal details of the organisation in terms of who would be dealing with which floor in terms of prison officers.”
The footage also suggested that Boateng had given Ojo confidential information from his files. In one clip he could be heard saying: “Let me see what it says in relation to my…” Ojo had been in the jail since 2020 after being recalled to prison for breaking his licence conditions in relation to a 2016 sentence for possession of heroin with intent to supply, the court heard.
Boateng’s phone was seized after she was arrested and it showed she had not used it to contact Ojo. Her number was not among those he had dialled from the prison, it was said. But Ms Kenyon added that messages on Boateng’s phone revealed she had told a colleague she was in a relationship with Ojo who had given her his Snapchat contact details.
She said: “Ms Boateng was discussing matters with another prison officer in terms suggesting an ongoing romantic relationship.” Ms Kenyon said that the fellow officer had observed: “This guy really believes you are his fairytale ending.” Boateng missed a previous hearing at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court in January because of complications over her pregnancy.
Defence barrister Ioana Nedelcu said her client had no previous convictions and had obtained a masters degree in criminology after joining the prison service. She said Boateng had been threatened by Ojo who claimed he knew where she lived after she found a phone in his cell in November 2023.
Records show Boateng had made requests for Ojo to be moved to another wing after she made the find, the court heard. But the barrister added: “She concedes that her behavior was wrong and makes no excuses for it.” There was no suggestion that the pair had ever had sex and Boateng has now split from the father of her daughter after he learned of her contact with Ojo, the court heard.
She pleaded guilty to “wilfully and without reasonable excuse or justification misconducted yourself in a way which amounted to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder by engaging in an inappropriate relationship with Vincent OJO.”
Earlier this year, former HMP Wandsworth prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu, 30, was jailed for 15 months after having sex with an inmate in a cell.
Footage of the pair was widely shared on social media. A Prison Service spokesperson said at the time: “While the overwhelming majority of Prison Service staff are hardworking and honest, we’re catching more of the small minority who break the rules by bolstering our Counter Corruption Unit and strengthening our vetting processes.”
Judge Martin Edmunds KC said her sexual activities, filmed between June 26 and 28 last year, had undermined discipline within the prison. He told the ex-officer, a Portuguese passport holder though born in Venezuela: “You are not responsible for the wider problems of prisons, but you have added to them.”
In April prison officer Katie Evans, 26, was sentenced to 21 months behind bars by a judge who told her she had been “manipulated by an experienced criminal”. Evans had been “corrupted” by prisoner Daniel Brownley, who was jailed for attempted robbery, shortly after she started working at HMP Doncaster when she was 21.
She had more than 140 phone calls with Brownley, moved money around bank accounts for him, and supplied him with information the prison held on him, Judge Jeremy Richardson KC told Sheffield Crown Court. When talking to Brownley she referred to herself as “your queen” and boasted to an ex-prison officer that she had performed oral sex on him.
In January, prison officer Toni Cole, 29, was jailed for a year after admitting having an inappropriate relationship with an HMP Five Wells inmate in January 2023.