“Inside Monster Mansion: HMP Full Sutton” — Reviewed

Those familiar with this subject will probably reply HMP Wakefield is Monster Mansion, but some of the unsavouries incarcerated in Full Sutton give Wakefield a run for its money.

This Channel 5 documentary is currently live for those who can receive it. As well as a number of ex-cons and former prison staff its contributors include Harry Potter. No, not that Harry Potter; this dude is better known as a barrister but he is alluded to here as an author and prison historian. Needless to say, this isn’t his first venture into television.

Full Sutton opened in 1987 and houses Category B as well as Category A prisoners, but obviously it is a Category A or (in Home Office parlance) High Security Prison. While it is clearly escape-proof without outside assistance, that doesn’t mean it is entirely safe.  In October 2019, an inmate named Richard Huckle was tortured to death by another inmate. Those familiar with the name will not mourn his passing. Huckle has been described as Britain’s worst ever child sex abuser; he committed his crimes mostly in the Far East and belonged to a secret network of paedophiles; his youngest victim was just six months old.

Huckle’s killer Paul Fitzgerald was only a marginally less depraved serial sexual predator.  He was given a life sentence with a 34 year tariff. This is necessary to maintain prison discipline; if inmates are not punished severely for attacking other inmates they will eventually turn their attentions to prison staff, indeed one former prison officer who appeared in this programme had been held hostage by two prisoners at one point, but fortunately he was released unharmed.

Full Sutton has been home to serial killer Dennis Nilsen who died from natural causes in 2018, and double child killer Russell Bishop whose death was reported here in January.

There is a lot more in this documentary which the reader might like to explore, some of it very sordid, but for society the most important part of it concerns what happens when those who can be released are released. Many less serious offenders and small time professional criminals end up serving a life sentence on the instalment plan; they are discharged from prison with all their worldly possessions in a transparent plastic bag, a discharge grant and perhaps a travel warrant to a hostel. It is little wonder that many of those without strong family ties and job prospects go into a downward spiral.

Long term prisoners including paroled lifers, are generally given a lot more support, but even then they can have difficulties reintegrating themselves into society, as those interviewed here point out.