There are over 700 inmates convicted of sex offences at HMP Wakefield, Britain’s most notorious prison, yet last year, only 10 attended and completed the Core Sex Offenders’ Treatment Programme (SOTP) designed to help reduce their level of risk. Some of this is because there are many like Tony Amiela, The Morally Brothers, Ian Kennedy and many other high-profile rapists like them are in denial. However, there are others who refuse to do the programmes because both untrained wing staff and under-qualified psychologists write inaccurate reports which breeds a culture of mis-trust. The errors and omissions are frequent and much talked about, but very little is done to rectify them; the psychologists really do believe themselves to be infallible. Even with the help of an experienced lawyer, the men that do want to move on and get help are hindered by the all-female psychology team.

HMP Wakefield currently runs the SOTP, adapted from a course developed in the US and Canada. However, these countries actually found that the treatment programme increased the inmates’ level of risk and effectively made them more of a danger to the public on their release.

According to my sources, the US wisely decided to drop these programmes but not before selling this damaged franchise to the UK, which still has seven years of the contract left to run. Because of the initial cost, because so much has already been invested, and because the British Home Office has nothing in place as an alternative, these dangerously flawed programmes will continue to run, creating potentially even more dangerous sex offenders when they are eventually released back into society. Those refusing to do the programmes may be the smart ones!

There are those men who want to address their crimes, who want to reduce their risk factors, by transferring to specialist therapeutic prisons like HMP Grendon, but Wakefield is refusing to help them unless they attend the SOTP first. In other words, Wakefield is potentially increasing the inmates’ risk to the public before allowing them the opportunity to lower it. The Governor of HMP Wakefield is obviously more interested in funding diversity forums and making himself look good, than serving the general public by reducing the inmates’ risk.