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Notorious prisoners such as the Soham killer Ian Huntley are facing increasingly violent attacks from inmates with “nothing to lose”, the head of the Prison Governors’ Association has said.
Tom Wheatley, the president of the PGA, which represents governors in England and Wales, said those serving lengthy sentences or whole-life tariffs in high-security institutions had “no fear” of being given additional time in prison, and could earn status by singling out famous child murderers and paedophiles.
Civil servants are reviewing the management of high-profile prisoners in the high-security estate and the management of high-risk prisoners, it can be disclosed.
Huntley, the former school caretaker who murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, died earlier this month after an attack at HMP Frankland in County Durham.
At HMP Wakefield, the paedophile singer Ian Watkins died in October after being stabbed in the neck. Weeks later at the same prison Kyle Bevan, who had been jailed for life for murdering his partner’s two-year-old daughter, Lola James, was also killed in an alleged attack.
Wheatley, who was the governor at HMP Wakefield for nearly five years until March 2024, said that prisoners are serving longer sentences, so there was little incentive to resist committing a vicious attack.
He said: “As prison sentences have become longer, and as more prisoners are given whole-life tariffs or given minimum sentences of 20, 30 or 40 years, it is harder to persuade them to hold back on their violent instincts. They have nothing to lose.
“If you are serving a long sentence, you can feel as if you don’t have a life ahead of you – your family may well have disowned you, your relationships may have broken down. And in those circumstances, you have to make your alliances among the people you live with – your fellow inmates – to survive.
“In those circumstances, making yourself notorious, being well-known by committing a violent act, might help. If you murder a high-profile child murderer or paedophile, you can establish yourself as a dangerous man. That has some value.”
High-security prisons were “highly emotional places” and tensions had been exacerbated by overcrowding and inexperienced staff, Wheatley added.
“If someone looks you in the eye and says they are going to kill you, there is a good chance that they mean it,” he said.
“Tensions are rising because high-security prisons are increasingly overcrowded and the staff working in them often do not have the experience and the know-how to defuse tensions in the way they would have 20 or 30 years ago.”
There were seven homicides in prisons in England and Wales in 2025, up from six in 2024, according to figures published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in January. They showed a sharp rise from the period of 2019 to 2023, when there were between one and three each year.
HMPs Frankland and Wakefield are among eight prisons in the long-term high-security estate whose role is now being reviewed by the MoJ.
In June, the Long Term High Security Estate Taskforce was established to coordinate departmental efforts to tackle the risks to safety and security.
It is understood officials are looking specifically at the circumstances in which high-profile prisoners are held.
HMP Frankland has experienced a series of serious violent incidents. In April 2025, Hashem Abedi, who was jailed for life for helping his brother carry out the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, allegedly attacked three prison officers with boiling liquid and an improvised weapon, causing serious injuries. He has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder.
Violent incidents have increased at HMP Wakefield, a Victorian prison housing more than 630 inmates, with many reluctant to leave their cells, according to a report by inspectors.
Representatives from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons reported in September that there had been a 62% rise in violent incidents and a 72% increase in serious assaults since the last inspection in 2022.
Andrea Coomber, the chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said vulnerable prisoners, such as sex offenders and high-profile murderers, are often seen as easy targets.
She added: “There are hierarchies in every prison, and sex offenders are right at the bottom. We are hearing from many sex offenders that they are spending more time self-isolating in their cells because they do not feel safe.”
Marcus Johnstone, a solicitor who spent years specialising in prison law, said minor conflicts could escalate quickly.
“We’re talking about people being slashed with razor blades because somebody has pushed in front of them in a queue for the canteen. Or there’s an argument over whether somebody has got more food,” he said.
Huntley, a former school caretaker, was serving two life sentences with a minimum 40-year tariff, handed down in 2003 for the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002.
Anthony Russell, 43, has been charged with Huntley’s murder and appeared via video link from HMP Frankland at Teesside crown court on Thursday.
Two men have been charged with the murder of Watkins, the former Lostprophets singer jailed for a string of child sexual abuse offences, including the attempted rape of a baby. Rashid Gedel, 25, also known as Rico Gedel, and Samuel Dodsworth, 43, are due to face trial in May.
Bevan, 33, was two and a half years into a minimum sentence of 28 years when he was found dead. Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 56, and David Taylor, 63, have been charged with his murder.
A spokesperson for the MoJ said: “This government inherited a prisons system in crisis, overcrowded and with significant staffing shortages. We are recruiting more officers and deploying them where they’re most needed, as well as investing £40m in new security measures to clamp down on the contraband that fuels violence behind bars.”
‘My son deserves to be in prison, but now I fear for his life’
Barbara* is the mother of a 21-year-old autistic man who two years ago was jailed for seven years for sex offences including the grooming of a 14-year-old girl and making and distributing indecent images of children. She explains what it is like for her son to live under a constant threat of sudden violence in prison.
Last week, a 20-year-old sex offender who had recently moved to my son’s prison was ‘kettled’. In prison, that means boiling water, mixed with a bit of sugar, was thrown into his face. He has been scarred for life.
This is the kind of threat that my son and every sex offender has to live with every day when they are in prison.
He never knows who he can trust and when he might be attacked. All he can be certain of is that there are a lot of people in his prison who want to see him dead or in pain.
My son has regularly received threats and been told by other inmates that they will kill him. They try to lure him into their cells so they can attack him and claim it was self-defence.
Some of the staff have called my son “paedo”. One staff member, under her breath, used to whisper “dirty bastard”.
My son deserves to be imprisoned. He committed a serious crime and there was a 14-year-old victim. I often think of her. I am ashamed of what he did.
But I want to see him rehabilitated as well as having his freedom taken away. Instead, he just fears for his life, stays in his cell, stays away from education, stays away from the showers. Sometimes he misses meals if he doesn’t think it is safe for him.
My son is in a jail for young men and most of them are not sex offenders. There is no designated wing for sex offenders and they are mixed in together. I have tried to get him transferred to a prison with a specific sex offenders’ facility.
After making a request through my MP, I received a letter from the prisons minister, Lord Timpson, in which he said that the “vast majority of men convicted of sexual offences work and live harmoniously with those convicted of other offences”. So my son, who has emotionally unstable personality disorder, stays away from others and the prison authorities are quite happy about that. It saves the staff a lot of bother.
Another sex offender who didn’t self-isolate was not so lucky. In my son’s first few weeks in the prison, this other young man was stabbed more than 20 times on the prison landing.
His heart stopped twice. He was airlifted to hospital and just about survived. It made the threats real.
When you have a son who has been imprisoned for sex offences, your life turns upside down. You lose your friends. Family members refuse to talk to you. We are hated too.
I read last week the abuse on social media aimed at Ian Huntley’s mum, Lynda Richards, for going to his bedside while he lay dying, I felt for her.
You can’t stop a mother from loving her son, whatever he has done. Of course she wanted to be by his side when he died. People just expect the love to switch off. It doesn’t.
Without my support, I am not sure my son would be alive – he has threatened to take his own life rather than be stabbed to death in prison.
There are young lads in his prison with no support at all. If no one loves them, what happens when they are released? They will not be human.
* Not her real name.
