Ioana Nedelcu persuades the court to take an exceptional course and secures a suspended sentence order for a former prison officer who engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a prisoner
Ioana represented an ex prison officer who was a supervisor officer at HMP Pentonville and who towards the end of her 4 years employment with the prison system, engaged in an innapropriate relationship with a prisoner. Ioana's client was charged with misconduct in a public office.
There is a strong public interest that such offences require an immediate custodial sentence, and whilst Ioana recognised that, she also submitted that her client was left in a vulnerable position by the prison, having reported the same prisoner for making her feel uncomfortable and revealing personal information about her, and even though she asked the prison to remove him from the wing or transfer him to another prison, nothing was done about it. Ioana also pointed out that her client has exceptional mitigation that was not present in other cases, in that she is a mother to an infant child.
The judge was persuaded to take a wholly exceptional course and to suspended the sentence, recognising that a sentence of immediate imprisonment would be potentially extremley harmful.
Case link here.
Ioana was instructed by Bilal Tanveer at Morgan Has solicitors.
