Late last night, news broke of another attack by a high-profile prisoner at what should be one of our most secure jails. This time it seems that Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, has thrown boiling water in the face of an officer at HMP Belmarsh, the London jail which Hashem Abedi was moved to after his brutal attack on staff at HMP Frankland last month. Rudakubana is reported to have committed this attack on Thursday afternoon.
Thankfully the member of staff has already been released from hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. The Ministry of Justice have insisted that ‘violence in prison will not be tolerated and we will always push for the strongest possible punishment for attacks on our hardworking staff’. Frankly, it isn’t good enough.
When the death penalty was scrapped the expectation was that innocent people would be kept safe from those spared the noose.
Prisoners like Axel Rudakubana and Hashem Abedi are not like most inmates. They’re not even like most murderers. During my time as a prisoner I met many men serving long sentences for murder. In most cases as young men they killed another young man in a dispute over status, money or a woman. Their crimes have an entirely different character to the sadistic murder of children committed by the Southport and Manchester Arena killers.
These ‘typical’ murderers may have the potential for change, and the hope of release, if they demonstrate that they have changed, and that they no longer pose a risk. This means there are powerful incentives encouraging them to work with the system rather than attacking staff. Our long-term and high-security prison estate is built around housing men like this. What is becoming clear is that it is entirely unsuited to terrorists like Abedi and sadistic monsters like Rudakubana.
These prisoners have no realistic prospect of release, no plausible chance of even being moved to a lower security jail, and often glory in the notoriety they receive for attacking staff. In the case of jihadists like Abedi they also believe themselves to be soldiers, fighting an eternal war against our society, meaning prison officers and other staff will always be at risk from them.
This is wrong. When the death penalty was scrapped the expectation was that innocent people would be kept safe from those spared the noose. Rudakubana will never again be able to attack innocent children, but prison staff should not have to risk assault, maiming and death in the course of their work.
It’s only a matter of luck that last month’s attacks by Abedi at Frankland didn’t leave an officer dead. This time Rudakubana did little harm. But he has half a century to plan, to practice and to keep trying. Unless something changes then eventually Rudakubana, Abedi, or another very dangerous prisoner will succeed in killing a prison officer. Something needs to change.
Firstly we must consider practical access to weapons. Kettles are present in almost every prison cell in the country. The vast majority of prisoners can be trusted with them, but it is clear that some can never be allowed to have anything which they might use as a weapon.
As a society we chose to end capital punishment sixty years ago. That means we have created a system where we have to somehow contain for decades a small number of men who will only stop being dangerous when they no longer have the capacity.
At the very least men like Abedi and Rudakubana need to be held in a prison like a US ‘Supermax’, served their meals in very sparse cells, shackled for solitary exercise, and never again allowed to harm another person. Anything else is a betrayal of their victims and of the officers who must work alongside these killers each day.
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