A PRISON officer who had a behind-bars romance with an inmate has been found guilty of misconduct after she tried to have a baby with the convict while he was still doing time.

Gran Alison Sharples, 46, was caught with gangster Marvin Berkeley’s semen in a medicine syringe in her handbag during a routine search on her way into work at HMP Garth, Leyland, Lancs.

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A love letter from the lag was also found in Sharples’ underwear drawer.

Sharples told pals she was in love with Berkeley and planned to have a “chocolate baby” with him.

She said the prisoner had passed her a bag under the cell door and she had collected his semen in the purple syringe.

But when she was caught, she claimed Berkeley had handed it to her and she had forgotten to dispose of it - or report it to her supervisors.

Camille Morland, prosecuting, said: “The relationship between the prisoner and te defendant was close, covert and sexually intimate, if not necessarily physically so.

“It is submitted that such a relationship is one which falls far below that which is expected by a member of prison staff.

“It is in breach of prison rules and professional conduct, such that public confidence in the system is undermined.”

The jury at Preston Crown Court took less than three hours to find Sharples, of Hamilton Road, Chorley, guilty of misconduct in a public office.

She will be sentenced on November 30.