Ian Huntley’s graveside will be a lonely one. Few will mourn a man who lurked in the darkest shadows of every parent’s imagination, occupying the same space that Ian Brady did for an earlier generation. You could raise your children in loving, stable homes; in quiet, leafy villages; teach them about stranger danger, give them mobile phones, tell them to walk in pairs – and none of it was enough, because the Devil always finds a way.
There will be little sympathy for this particular devil and some will take satisfaction in his death and the suffering that preceded it
There will be little sympathy for this particular devil and some will take satisfaction in his death and the suffering that preceded it. If anyone had it coming, it was Ian Huntley. The indelible image of summer 2002 was that snapshot of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in their matching, Vodafone-era Manchester United shirts. It resembled photographs on sideboards and in overflowing shoeboxes atop wardrobes in homes across the nation. These could have been anyone’s daughters.
Understandable though all these emotions are, the circumstances of Huntley’s death are no cause for celebration. He was allegedly attacked by a fellow prisoner at HMP Frankland, with the weapon said to be a metal bar with a pointed end. His injuries were so catastrophic that his own mother was reportedly unable to recognise him. The fact that another prisoner was able to gain access to an inmate as notorious as Huntley, one who has been seriously assaulted more than once since entering custody, is a gross failure on the part of the prison leadership. It suggests an institution in which the prisoners rule and staff are there to maintain the pretence of good governance.
If this is the case, Frankland is no exception; it is the rule. Britain is so beset by crises that it’s difficult to keep track but one of the most neglected is the crisis in our prisons. It is a crisis of capacity (more people are sentenced to prison than even an expanding prison estate can accommodate); a crisis of recruitment and retention (prison officers report unsafe levels of understaffing and overcrowding; the prison service now relies on importing staff from west Africa); a crisis of leadership (HM Inspectorate of Prisons has issued 15 urgent notifications in the past five years); and a crisis of governance (including the growing population of foreign nationals, gang violence, and Islamist recruitment).
Huntley’s death must be considered in this context because it is a symptom of the barely contained anarchy that defines British prisons. Tempting though it might be to take satisfaction in his gruesome end, he is dead because an institution tasked with controlling the most dangerous men failed in what is its primary duty. Huntley might be a devil but his alleged killer was no avenging angel. The prisoner who has been named in connection with Huntley’s death is a triple-murderer who, hours after being shown a pregnant woman’s ultrasound scan, lured her to a wooded area where he raped and murdered her.
Let’s dispense with any sentimental cant about criminals and their code of honour. That’s mush-headed nonsense put about by ill-informed civilians. Inmates who murder fellow inmates are not righteous. They have not committed a ‘public-service murder’. Huntley will have been attacked for the same reason most prisoners are attacked inside: to boost the attacker’s place in the inmate hierarchy. Violence makes you feared; violence against a notorious prisoner makes you famous. There is such a thing as custodial celebrity and those who are known, and known for brutality, will attract no end of foot soldiers eager to do their bidding and watch their back. Huntley didn’t die for revenge but for reputation. Even behind bars, branding is everything.
Forgotten amid all this are Holly and Jessica, and their loved ones who must contend with seeing Huntley’s face all over the news again. There is nothing righteous in this outcome. A double child-killer is dead, it is true, but he was sentenced to serve life with a minimum of 40 years in prison. In the end, he served 24. Twelve years for each girl. In the absence of a death penalty and given the collapse of Christianity in England, there is the consolation of neither the rope nor eternal damnation for the worst offenders. That leads some to put their faith in jailhouse justice. But there is no justice when criminals run the jailhouse, only chaos and violence and sadism.
Justice would have been Ian Huntley serving his sentence, knowing that many more years lay ahead of him, with no hope of release. Instead of taking satisfaction when one killer offs another, we should demand a prison system in which killers are safely contained and controlled so that they serve their sentences in full.
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