A Brighton drug dealer’s plot with a prison officer to smuggle spice into jail has instead landed her behind bars.
Lilea Sallis, 28, was put in touch with prison officer Isabelle Dale by Shahid Sharif, who had become romantically involved with Dale while he was serving time at HMP Coldingley in Surrey.
Dale and Sharif, a convicted robber, became engaged and when he was moved to HMP Swaleside in Kent, she became one of his regular visitors.
She planned to bring envelopes dipped in spice into the prison. Messages from Sharif showed him claiming he could make £3,000 a week from selling the spice inside jail.
Sentencing the trio at Southwark Crown Court, Judge Christopher Hehir said this may have been an exaggeration.
He said a postal strike foiled their arrangements and it was organised for Dale to travel to Brighton to meet Sallis and collect the envelopes.
However Sallis backed out because of a conflict with Sharif about prices, and content he was posting about her on social media,
“I don’t think she had a fit of conscience, to put it that way, but I think that’s why her enthusiasm cooled,” Judge Hehir added.
Sharif admitted one count of conspiring to convey a List A article into prison. Dale, 23, of Cosham, Portsmouth, and Sallis denied the same charge but were convicted at trial.
Dale was also convicted by the same jury of two counts of misconduct in a public office between September 2021 and December 2022.
Dale was sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment. Sallis was sentenced to two and a half years in jail and Sharif received 27 months.
Sentencing the three at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday, the judge told Dale: “I have concluded that unfortunately you are a thoroughly devious and untruthful and manipulative young woman.
“I accept you have some vulnerabilities but, as was apparent in your evidence, you seek to use them as a shield and an excuse for your actions. But they did not provide that.”
He added: “I suspect you actually joined the prison service with a view to becoming involved in criminal activities with prisoners.”
The trial was told the prison officer, who has since resigned, had sex with Sharif in the chapel area of HMP Coldingley.
Judge Hehir said he could not know if they were intimate in the chapel area but text messages show they “clearly had a sexual relationship” and other prison officers “obviously had clocked on to what was going on”.
Sharif was at the time serving a 12-year and 10-month sentence for an “extremely violent robbery of a jewellers on the south coast”, the judge added.
Dale’s home was searched and a “rather garish” picture of the couple was found hanging above her bed, he said.
It had photographs of them “spliced together” with a white heart between and the date May 17 2022, believed to be the day of their engagement.
After the chapel incident, Sharif moved to Swaleside prison and Dale signed off work sick on reduced pay.
Their relationship continued and Dale was involved in the drug smuggling conspiracy while still employed as prison officer, the court heard.
Dale visited him five times in Swaleside between September and October 2022, sometimes with his family members with whom she was by then in fairly regular contact, it was told.
She had joined his list of approved visitors by concealing her job role, the judge said.
In a demonstration of “quite how thoroughly corrupt you had become”, Dale attempted to persuade Sharif’s sister to sneak in a USB for him, he told the court, which the sibling declined to do.
The prison officer also passed messages to Sharif’s criminal associates outside the jail “about the movement or sale of what I’m quite sure was illicit property”, the judge said.
She also posted stories and used the messaging service on his social media account on his behalf.
Dale resigned as a prison officer before she was arrested on her sixth visit.
She was found to have Sharif’s street name tattooed on her neck as well as an engagement ring and carbon paper in her car, the court heard.
Carbon paper can be used to disguise contraband from x-rays.
The judge said evidence put to the jury showed she “well understood what corruption was and the risks and dangers relating to it”.
He added: “She wanted to do it. I think she’s attention seeking and I think she seeks validation and I think she did that through relationships with prisoners.”
Syam Soni, defending Dale, had said her offending was influenced by her mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, emotionally unstable personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
He had claimed she was “ill-equipped” for the prison environment and more vulnerable than others.
Thankfully the judge had a modicum of common sense and rightfully handed down a decent sentence. I would have been a bit more severe..
Question is how did the prison service let this happen in the first place, no vetting, no mental health assessment and clearly not much supervision at work.