Tom Wheatley spent six years as the governor of ‘Monster Mansion’ HMP Wakefield and he opened up about the difficulties inside the prison where Russell Brand is set to move to
Russell Brand is reportedly set to transfer to ‘Monster Mansion’ HMP Wakefield — the notorious prison where Lost Prophets paedophile Ian Watkins was murdered last year.
The sex predator is serving a 10-year sentence for raping one woman and sexually abusing three others— and his potential new digs is currently home to infamous lags like Jamie Varley, Roy Whiting, Sidney Cooke and Jeremy Bamber.
After Watkins was stabbed in the neck at the Category A prison in West Yorkshire, Tom Wheatley, the governor of Wakefield from 2018 until 2024, spoke about life inside the facility.
He said it held a range of people with different outlooks, all living in one place where the environment is “inherently stressful”. He added: “In some ways, it is a real testament to the forbearance of people in prison and the skill of staff and others who are around people in prison that this doesn’t happen more regularly.”
Tom is now the President of the Prison Governors Association and he made the comments on The Secret Life of Prisons podcast where he spoke about why Wakefield in particular was so challenging.
And recalling a chilling conversation he had with an inmate there, which demonstrates how some lags in the ‘Monster Mansion’ have nothing to lose, he said: “I can remember having a conversation with a prisoner who was serving a natural life sentence who was living in a close supervision centre.
“I was talking to this guy and he was angry about something that was happening to him in terms of the way we were dealing with him and we were engaged in a debate. That is a fairly usual thing to happen. But he said to me during the course of that debate, ‘You do realise, Tom, if I killed you now, nothing would happen to me?’
“I laughed because there is not a lot else you can do in those circumstances. And I said, ‘But you are not going to do that.’ And he said, ‘No I am not going to do that because I quite like you.’ But that was his reality and that was true.”
Tom said Wakefield was home to many criminals who have appeared on the front pages of newspapers and he said half of the 750 inmates there have “given up on a prospect of a life after prison”.
Prison, he explained, comes their life. Because of the horror of their crimes, their loved ones abandon them and they eventually have all their ties to society cut — making them dangerous and unpredictable.
He said in other prisons in the UK, people may act a certain way to prepare themselves for getting out, and that if they are serving two years, the chances are their children will still be children and their partners will remain there as will their homes once they regain freedom.
However, with a 25-year-old serving a 40-year tariff, they have no prospect of what that period of time looks like, and the outside world can begin to lose meaning.
He added: “That is really difficult to cope with. It means that things that are, you know, things outside of prison people would consider really minor go wrong, are not minor [in Wakefield]. It changes perspectives on all sorts of stuff, and to some extent it removes rules that most of us would live by because we wouldn’t do things for the fear of negative consequences. So it is a really complicated place to be.”
Tom also explained that Wakefield looked like a traditional prison and the Victorian building was tall and narrow with four main wings all holding 180 prisoners each.
He also said nobody was forced to bunk together because all cells are single and speaking about sex offenders in particular, and how they too can lose hope of ever being freed, he added: “Wakefield traditionally has an older prison population, a lot of men who committed sexual offences who were older when they were convicted and many who come to Wakefield and stop thinking about doing the things they need to do to earn their eventual release so they stay there and they invest in their life in the prison.”
As for Brand and his potential switch to Wakefield, a source told The Sun: “Brand will not be happy about the move, if it goes ahead. He would be hoping for a much softer low-security jail, and he might end up in one towards the end of his sentence.”