YOU PAY FOR BRITAIN'S MOST VIOLENT THUG TO HAVE DESIGNER SPECS

The Daily Expess
11 May 2007
By Tom Whitehead

Charles Bronson's designer glasses were broken at Full Sutton jail - now he wants a new pair

BRITAIN’S most violent prisoner is to get a £200 pair of designer glasses.

And the taxpayer will pick up the tab so that he can watch TV football.

Charles Bronson, who has spent most of his life behind bars, has been offered the cash after his £20 specs were broken in a fight with prison guards.

He then complained that he could not see Match of the Day.

Now he plans to buy a pair of luxury Calvin Klein glasses after the Prison Service offered to hand over up to £200 in compensation.

Armed robber Bronson, 54, is the latest prisoner to take advantage of Britain’s compensation culture.

The Daily Express told last year how £9million was doled out to inmates in compensation in just three years.

It included hundreds of pounds each for prisoners at HMP Wakefield – where Bronson is held – after they had DVD players confiscated.

Furious campaigners last night slammed the latest handout as an insult to crime victims and demanded Bronson be given basic glasses.

Blair Gibbs, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “It doesn’t seem to matter how despicable the prisoner, the unbelievably generous duty of care extended by our warped Prison Service is always the same.”

He added: “Whatever happened to NHS specs? Prison managers just don’t seem to understand that nobody wants taxpayers’ money wasted on Calvin Klein spectacles for a pathological CategoryA ­prisoner who has already had millions of our money spent on keeping him locked-up for decades.” Short-sighted and bearded Bronson is one of the most dangerous men in our jails and has described himself as Britain’s “No1 hostage taker”.

Originally jailed for armed robbery in 1975, he was given life after taking an art teacher hostage for 44 hours during a siege in Hull Prison in 1999.

But he is now in line for ­compensation after his spectacles were broken during a “restraint incident” with at least two prison guards while in the maximum security wing of Full Sutton prison, near York. Bronson wrote a letter to a friend – littered with errors -– from Wakefield Prison boasting: “Well, I’m finally being compensated over them at Full Sutton smashing my specs. Now don’t that prove everything I’ve said about what went on there?

“Why compensate me if it was my doing? They’ve studied CCTV of the incident. They’ve seen the cowardly screw who broke them and its as simple as that.”

One fellow prisoner said: “Charlie really kicked up a stink about his specs and the screws were worried.

“They thought it would just be easier to stump up the cash for the specs that he wanted.”

Bronson has served time in 120 prisons, staged eight roof top protests, assaulted 20 prison officers and caused £500,000 of damage. He has taken hostages on 10 occasions, including an incident when he threatened to eat one.

MAL'S REPLY (PUBLISHED ON DAILY EXPRESS WEBSITE):

The glasses that were smashed were not "designer". They were actually an antique gold pair given to Charlie by his friend Lord Longford. As such they were valuable, but had added sentimental value. Charlie has to wear special glasses because his eyesight has been badly effected by so many years of living in artificial light. I have looked through them and, believe me, his eye-sight is appalling. The compensation also covered a smashed Seiko watch, which cost £80. £200 is a paltry amount to be devoting so much of your newsprint to. Why not report on the rewards that Ian Huntley gets in the same prison NOT to commit suicide? They knock £200 into a cocked hat.

If the antique glasses of any reasonable person were smashed deliberately do you imagine that they would be happy to accept a pair of National Health specs as replacement? The law should work inside our prisons just as fairly as it works on the outside, although it rarely does.

"One fellow prisoner said"? What fellow prisoner? Charlie is locked in a cage for 23 hours a day in the dungeon at HMP Wakefield. His fellow prisoners, who he has no contact with, are the likes of Robert "Hannibal the Cannibal" Maudsley who ate the brain of a fellow prisoner. Are these the sources you are quoting?

Charlie's art has been exhibited in galleries as far apart as London and Canada. Over the past few years Charlie has raised thousands of pounds for children's charities by donating his art for auction and sale. This is not the "monster" that you and the other "gentlemen" of the press like to portray. Why not do a bit of research and start to portray this man as the human being he really is? He may not be Mother Theresa but he most certainly isn't "Britain's most violent thug!"

 

Incidentally, I would like to ask what the errors were in the letter that I published on Charlie's website (www.freebronson.co.uk), from which you have quoted? Can I just point out that your article contains many glaring errors: Charlie was jailed at Chester court in 1974 NOT 1975, his glasses did not cost £20, Charlie does NOT have a beard. If you want to know the facts then please contact me and ask before publishing.