A nurse who worked inside one of England’s most criticized prisons has admitted carrying on a year-long relationship with an inmate previously convicted of manslaughter — a relationship she kept alive through a phone he was never supposed to have. Stephanie Adair, 29, of Southwark, south London, pleaded guilty to one count of misconduct in a public office at Kingston Crown Court on Oct. 13, over her relationship with Jakhi Crosdale, 28, while she worked as a nurse at HMP Wandsworth.
According to the charge, the relationship ran from September 2023 to November 2024. Adair is said to have kept it going by staying in contact with Crosdale through an illicit mobile phone he had in the prison. Crosdale, appearing by video link, pleaded guilty to a separate charge of his own — unauthorized transmission of images or sound out of a prison, covering February through October 2024.
A convicted killer, back inside on recall
Crosdale was first jailed in 2015 after being convicted of manslaughter by reason of provocation; court reporting around this case has described him as a “drug-dealing killer,” and he is currently back in custody on recall until 2029. Nothing in the public reporting says what, if anything, Adair knew about his record when the relationship began, or whether she was ever involved in his care.
One outlet covering the plea described Wandsworth as “England’s worst jail” — a characterization that tracks with years of inspection findings at a prison that has repeatedly been flagged for overcrowding, understaffing and security lapses. A relationship running for over a year inside a facility under that level of scrutiny, carried on with a phone that was never supposed to exist, is its own small case study in how much a determined pair can get away with before anyone notices.
Exposed, reportedly, by an address on his court papers
The relationship reportedly came apart in an almost absurd way: Crosdale listed Adair’s home address on his own court paperwork, which is what tipped investigators off. Both Adair and Crosdale were granted unconditional bail and are due to be sentenced on Feb. 9. No outcome has been decided yet.
Adair’s nursing registration has not been pulled. The Nursing and Midwifery Council placed her under an interim conditions-of-practice order rather than a suspension — first imposed in 2025 and renewed again at a review hearing on July 1, 2026, according to the regulator’s own published decisions. The order bars her from working in any prison, young offenders’ institution, or other facility holding someone serving a court-imposed sentence, and limits her to a single substantive employer rather than agency work. She remains on the register while the criminal case plays out.
Correctional nursing puts you alone in a room, day after day, with people the rest of the world has locked away — and the job only works if the professional line is absolute, no exceptions and no talking yourself into “he’s not so bad once you get to know him.” I’ve worked corrections. The isolation of that setting, and the sympathy a patient can build with the one person who shows up and treats them like a human being, are both real, and they’re exactly how something like this starts: not with a plan, but with one conversation too many, then another. The NMC’s interim order here is the right instinct — it doesn’t strike her off before the regulator has ruled on the case, but it keeps her out of the one setting where this happened until a court decides what comes next. That’s accountability without pretending a year inside a locked facility undoes itself the moment someone notices.