Mother’s Day outing for jailed cocaine dealer sparks outrage
PRISON officials have provoked fury by releasing a cocaine dealer to enjoy a luxury spa break with his mum less than three years into his ten-year prison sentence.
Luke Jewitt, 33, who was convicted of helping to run a £5.2million smuggling ring, was pictured posing in the Jacuzzi on Mother’s Day in March, and relaxing on a massage bed.
He was jailed in 2014 but has already been allowed out on day release. Mr Jewitt is believed to have spent Mother’s Day at the Santai Spa in Birmingham. The spa has an outdoor Jacuzzi with lake views, a salt cave and mosaic hot-stone loungers. Packages cost up to £140 per day.
His luxury outing was condemned last night by Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary.
“This man was a kingpin of a sophisticated drugs importation and distribution network. He was pushing huge quantities of cocaine and cannabis on to the streets – and was convicted after gang members were caught with 3.69 tonnes of the stuff,” Mr Johnson writes in The Daily Telegraph.
“He has only served four years of a nine-year sentence. What the hell is he doing, living it up at the weekend in a Jacuzzi, with his mum?”
The revelation comes amid calls from families of victims for harsher punishment for knife crimes, with some questioning how attackers have been released halfway through their lengthy sentences.
Jewitt, whose brother Jamie was on
Love Island and is dating Camilla Thurlow, was released from Birmingham Prison on temporary licence.
Drugs detectives seized 3.69 tonnes of cocaine and cannabis – worth £4.6million – found behind furniture in a lorry on an Essex industrial estate. The drugs had been imported from Malaga, Spain. Police also found £600,000 worth of cocaine in a taxi. Eight members of the gang were jailed.
Jewitt’s life of crime inspired his childhood friend Nick Moorcroft to write The Corrupted, a thriller that has been turned into a film starring Hugh Bonneville and Timothy Spall.
In a recent interview, Jewitt insisted that he was a reformed man, and told any young people who might be thinking of getting involved with the drugs trade to “get your head down” and work hard instead.
The Prison Service said: “Release on licence is only granted towards the end of an offender’s prison sentence following a thorough risk assessment. All are subject to strict conditions, which 99 per cent of offenders abide by – with those who do not facing a return to a closed prison.”
Being released on licence helps a prisoner to reintegrate.
Previous cases where victims’ relatives have learned that their attackers could be released halfway through their sentences have provoked similar anger.
This year the family of Katrina Mukunova, 17, criticised the “joke” jail sentence handed to her killer, Oluwaseyi Dada. The 21-year-old drug dealer will serve half of his two-and-a-half year jail sentence before being released on licence. Dada became known as the “county lines killer” after the name of the practice of using children to traffic drugs into rural areas.
Relatives broke down when the sentence was announced, with one shouting in court: “Are you serious?”
‘What the hell is he doing, living it up at the weekend in a Jacuzzi, with his mum?’