There will be around 88,000 prisoners locked up over Christmas in the UK this year, including some of the country’s most notorious killers.
Former prisoner governor Vanessa Frake worked with Myra Hindley, who was responsible for the murders of five children in and around Manchester in the 1960s. She also crossed paths with Rose West, who murdered ten young women including her eight-year-old step daughter in the ’70s and ’80s.
According to the former screw, when it comes to Christmas Day, it can be a fraught time for staff with emotions high among inmates. Vanessa, who spent 16 years working in a high-security women’s jail before becoming a governor, reveals all about how criminals spend their Christmases behind bars…the Mirror reports.
Festive cheer
Vanessa said there is a festive atmosphere in the cells, with inmates playing pool competitions and cards.
She said: “Prisoners and staff just wanted to make the best of it and each prison has their way of getting through it. This might be pool competitions or playing cards. Staff do try and make an effort and they should be commended for that.”
The governor, who retired in 2013 and was awarded an MBE for her service, said there were no visits from friends or relatives on December 25.
She continued: “At Holloway the Salvation Army used to come in to play carols in the grounds of the jail. The women used to sing along with it as they went round.”
With TVs in every cell, prisoners can choose to watch The King’s Speech or perhaps a Christmas Day soap special.
She said: “The days of Porridge where you have one TV, put a film on and everybody sits down and watches it have gone. But TVs are a privilege not a right.”
While inmates can get Christmas cards sent in the post, presents aren’t allowed.
She said: “You can send their money in to put in their account to spend in the canteen. But there are no presents – sometimes the churches will do a little thing, maybe a Mars Bar or something but nothing like a present you’d see under the tree.”
Christmas dinner
Inmates are served a traditional Christmas dinner. In some jails, the meals will even be served to prisoners by staff.
Vanessa said: “When I was at Holloway the staff used to serve the food to give the prisoners who usually do it a rest,” says Vanessa. There’s Christmas dinner, with all sorts of diets catered for. The usual that you’d have outside. It used to be about £1.30 per prisoner per Christmas dinner.”
Booze is an absolute no-no of course, with a spike in the production of hooch, an alcoholic beverage made with ingredients that can be sourced in prison, happening each Christmas.
Vanessa said: “Before Christmas you always do a search of the wings to find any hidden hooch brewing. At (Wormwood) Scrubs we had the first ‘Hooch Pooch’, which was trained to sniff it out.
“It’s dead easy to make – they can buy fruit from the canteen, they get bread at mealtimes which has the yeast in it. You add some fruit, some bread, some sugar, some water and you leave it in a bottle by a radiator. You leave it to ferment. It can make you go blind, it can kill you, it’s 100 percent alcohol.”
Volatile atmosphere
While there can be festive cheer among inmates, the Christmas period can also be a “difficult” time for staff with heightened emotions and incidents of violence.
Vanessa said: “Staff are having to deal with raised incidents of self-harm and violence. When you’re locking up 1,200 men who don’t want to be there it’s a difficult time. Most prisoners just want to get on with their sentence and get out but you have the odd few that want to try and beat the system.”
One incident the former prison boss recalls at London’s now-closed Holloway Prison, which housed Myra Hindley, led to a food fight. “Everything was fine, the women had been served lunch and they were having their Christmas pud,” she says. “Somebody argued that she didn’t get as big a piece everybody else and it just ended up in a free for all, with Christmas Dinner and turkey and cranberry sauce running down the ward.”
Other incidents were more serious in nature. “I’ve had serious incidents of attempted suicide, we’ve had self harm, prisoner on prisoner violence,” says the retired governor. “All sorts of incidents over the years – little things can seem much more important at that time of year. They get phone calls to their families but it’s not necessarily the same thing as seeing your partner or children.”
The ‘lowest of the low’
Vanessa says: “There’s no differentiation whether you’re a serial killer or whether you’re someone who’s been done for driving dangerously. Prisoners are all treated the same. The punishment of prison is the removal of liberty – at the end of the day you’ve got to treat prisoners with humanity and decency because that’s what a professional prison officer does.”
From killers including Levi Bellfield – who is serving whole life terms for murdering schoolgirl Milly Dowler, Amelie Delagrange, 22, and Marsha McDonnell, 19 – to Mark Bridger, who was caged for life for murdering five-year-old April Jones, Christmas dinner will be served. But every aspect of prison life as a notorious killer needs risk assessment.
“If you take Letby, we know that she’s on a vulnerable prisoner unit where she’s with like-minded individuals who have murdered children so the risk is lowered then,” says Vanessa of the serial killer reportedly housed in HMP Low Newton in Durham alongside fellow whole-lifer Joanna Dennehy, who killed three men in a 12 day murdering spree.
“Child killers, child abusers, rapists are seen as the lowest of the low by other prisoners. The likes of Dennehy (also thought to be housed in HMP Low Newton) would think nothing of trying to get to somebody like Letby – I imagine she’s kept very far away from her.”