Inside Wormwood Scrubs, one of Britain’s worst prisons and home to its most infamous criminals
Celebrities such as Pete Doherty have spent time behind bars as well infamous killers like the Yorkshire Ripper, Holly Evans writes
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Regarded as one of Britain’s most notorious prisons, Wormwood Scrubs has held a place in the public imagination since the Victorian times.
The west London jail has housed some of the country’s worst criminals, including the Yorkshire Ripper and child-killer Ian Brady.
Listed as a grade-II-listed building thanks to its imposing brick gatehouse, it has appeared in countless TV shows and movies, including The Italian Job and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
With five wings and the capacity to hold up to 1,279 inmates, the prison is no stranger to famous faces. Former frontman of The Libertines Pete Doherty spent 29 days there while serving his 14-week sentence for breaching a probation order.
Once released, he told reporters that jail life was “a lot of gangsters and Radio 4” before adding: “Thank you Mrs Thatcher for putting me in the company of the most dangerous criminals in the country.”
The Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards also spent 24 hours in Wormwood Scrubs while the former Labour MP John Stonehouse spent seven years behind bars after faking his own death to escape his crippling debts.
Other inmates have been notorious purely for their sickening crimes, including Peter Sutcliffe, who murdered 13 women, and serial killer Dennis Nilsen who murdered young men at his north London flats.
Today, the prison is graded as Category B but is considered one of the worst jails in Britain, with inhumane conditions and violence frequently making headlines.
A shocking report released by the Independent Monitoring Board in March revealed that prisoners were often kept in their cells for 23 hours a day, while one inmate was left without a change of clothes for 14 days.
Between 2021 and 2022, six deaths were reported in custody, with three of those described as self-inflicted. A concerning increase in self-harming was also recorded, with 408 incidents involving 243 prisoners which spiked during the reintroduction of the Covid restrictions.
Prisoner-on-prisoner fighting also saw an increase as well as gang and drug-related issues causing an “unsettled” period in one section of the prison.
One inmate commented that he wouldn’t feed the food to his dog, with meals described as “inedible”, “diabolical” and “swimming in oil/fat”.
A staggering amount of food waste was recorded as prisoners threw it from their windows, while “dirty protests” were carried out with faeces smeared over walls.
In 2018, it was named as one of the “10 Prisons Project” initiated by then-prisons minister Rory Stewart, with aims to reduce drugs and violence to help reform prisoners.