Author: Jonathan Levi and Emma French
ISBN No: Paperback - 9781 7894 68885
Review date: 16/03/2026
No of pages: 330
Publisher: Blink Publishing - Bonnier Books
Publisher URL:
https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/
Year of publication: 01/01/2025
Brief:
price
£10.99
If protection of premises is a sensitive subject – for fear that the malicious might use that information, to cause harm – so much more sensitive is the security of prisons, which certainly Professional Security Magazine has covered relatively little over the years. That makes a further book about life inside British jails all the more of interest, writes Mark Rowe.
Inside Belmarsh: banged up in Britain’s toughest prison, follows a similar book Inside Broadmoor. The authors, Jonathan Levi and Emma French, have spoken to former inmates and prison staff alike. General readers will be doubly interested in the high-profile prisoners who have passed through – to name only some of those given their own chapters, the Conservative politician Jonathan Aitken (who related that while being escorted past a staffroom, he saw his face on a television documentary), Ronnie Biggs, the Hatton Garden safe box robbers, Julian Assange, the far-right political activist Tommy Robinson, and numerous murderers – and the prison’s regime. How brutal is it? Opinions differ, partly on the temperament of the prisoner and indeed prison officer, for the regime can take its toll on the staff. Many ‘voices’ in the book as the authors state at once are anonymous, for Belmarsh is ‘different to any other prison. It reminded us of Broadmoor in its level of secrecy and cautious access to information’.
All the more remarkable, then, the detail about security, physical (including anti-helicopter wire, overhead) and procedural. For example, might the food be used to smuggle messages? That’s mitigated, at the High Security Unit (HSU, ‘the prison within a prison’); meals from the kitchen are picked at random from other wings’ meals, so that offenders at work in the kitchens don’t know a meal is going to the HSU. Whether your interest in security is canines, or tech (to counter drones) or gates and walls, or video surveillance, this book has something for you. Sadly, like many books these days, it lacks an index. The book also covers the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court in London; and Woolwich Crown Court, next door to HMP Belmarsh and which hears serious criminal cases, such as about organised crime and terrorism. A chapter helpfully explains the categories of British prisons, to set Belmarsh in context. While security at Belmarsh is especially strict, because it houses the most violent and dangerous (perhaps able to influence others to radicalise), there as in other prisons, beneath the routine and regulations ‘lies an undercurrent of secrecy’. Besides contraband (whether mobile phones or synthetic drugs such as ‘spice’, including pieces of paper laced with the drug) prisoners may try to slowly (they after all have all the time in the world) corrupt officers or even have ‘illicit sexual encounters’. The extra security at Belmarsh makes it harder for contraband to enter; which only raises the price. It also leads to ‘paranoia’ among inmates and staff alike: is that conversation between inmate and young officer innocent; should it be reported; is that officer in the pocket of the inmate; if violence flares, as it can, will that officer have your back? That can only add to the stress upon staff. Although, as the book touches on, Belmarsh may be better resourced than most prisons (and strikingly, a 2026 advertising poster campaign for jobs in prisons is frank about showing how staff may face violence). To paraphrase one prisoner, half the prisoners ought not to be there (in other words; they have mental health difficulties and need help in that line) and the other half you don’t want to see out of prison (in other words, they are unreformable and would only do harm if and when let out).
As for terrorism, the book veers away from Belmarsh to go over the Fishmongers’ Hall terrorist, who served in Belmarsh only to be (outwardly) rehabilitated, only to carry out the terrorist attack in London that ended with him shot dead by police on London Bridge; calling into question whether the authorities can tell apart the truly rehabilitated from the deceiving-compliant. The book is up to date enough to include a prisoner’s attack on three staff at HMP Frankland, another high-security prison, in April 2025, which the authors describe as ‘this grotesque security breach’. The attacker, the brother of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber, reportedly went back to Belmarsh.
To sum up, we might say that Belmarsh has not entered the English language like Broadmoor – Belmarsh doesn’t have the remoteness of Broadmoor, it’s after all on a south east London bus route, which makes sense as visitors might need public transport – but this book will fascinate.
One quibble about this excellent book is that towards the end of a chapter on Barry George (convicted and then at a re-trial acquitted of the 1999 murder of the television presenter Jill Dando), a sentence is repeated.
