Disgraced Tory MP Jeffrey Archer is to be moved from the open prison where he was serving out a four-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice, to a tough Victorian jail, following what the Prison Service calls “a serious breach of trust”.
The move came after it was revealed this week that Mr Archer had attended a party thrown by a deputy chairman of the Conservative party, Gillian Shephard, during a weekend home visit. He had not requested permission to do so.
“He has severely breached the trust put in him by the governor,” said Prison Service chief, Martin Narey. “I’ve gone out of my way to defend our treatment of Lord Archer, to say we weren’t treating him in a privileged way. I feel very let down myself that he has abused the chances he has been given.”
The difference between his new destination, Lincoln Prison, and North Sea Camp, the open gaol where the peer has served out the first year of his term, could not be greater. At North Sea, inmates share houses furnished with TV and carpets and have access to extensive gardens and a gym. There, the best-selling author was allowed out at weekends to visit his family in Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, and held down a job as a backroom boy at Lincoln Theatre five days a week.
Life at Lincoln will be very different. “It is regarded by some as a bit of a hellhole really,” says Mark Leech, author of the Prisons Handbook, “an old Victorian prison which is overcrowded, understaffed and which has pretty inhumane conditions. He’ll be there with the riff raff of the prison system.”
The chances that 62-year-old Archer will serve out his sentence at Lincoln are slim. Pressure to place more serious offenders means that the peer will probably be moved before he becomes eligible for parole next summer. However, it is believed he is likely to be reclassified from category D, the lowest, to category C, which would mean he would not be able to return to an open facility.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
