Maximum security inmates raking in £500,000 in benefits
BRITAIN’S most dangerous offenders are racking up five-figure taxpayer sums at a maximum security hospital.
More than half the 228 patients at Ashworth Hospital claim up to £100 a week – more than £500,000 a year in total – in Employment Support Allowance (ESA), paid to those unable to work due to illness or disability.
Patients deemed unfit to stand trial by courts remain eligible to claim benefits regardless of their crimes.
Among those receiving benefits is Humphrey Burke, who killed a woman in London in 2016 by repeatedly stamping on her head.
Detainees are also being let off for vicious attacks on nurses and other staff because it is thought pointless to prosecute them, a detective based at the Merseyside hospital has said.
High-fives
In most cases, patients at Ashworth – former inmates include Moors murderer Ian Brady, police killer Dale Cregan and violent criminal Charles Bronson – receive conditional discharges.
Detective Constable Samantha Keaton of Merseyside Police, based at Ashworth is battling to ensure patients are punished and heavily fined for offences. She told a mental health and policing conference some “high-fived” each other after being let off for violent attacks.
DC Keaton said: “The majority of patients at Ashworth receive about £70 to £100 a week and they have no outgoings. Some of them have savings of tens of thousands of pounds as they receive benefits.”
DC Keaton added that the criminal justice system’s attitude was offenders were inside for life, mental health issues meant they would not be found guilty and if fined they could not pay.
But she said the average stay in Ashworth was only 5.6 years, adding: “Patients would go into court and high-five each other as they come out.”
A Freedom of Information request to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) showed that in 2014/15 90 Ashworth patients received an average of £88.33 a week in ESA payments.
But there are now thought to be more than 110 claiming, racking up a benefits bill of more than £500,000 a year. The DWP said those detained under the Mental Health Act without a criminal conviction may be entitled to Universal Credit or ESA. But they cannot claim ESA if convicted and given a custodial sentence.
A spokesman for Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust said: “If patients commit offences within Ashworth Hospital we try to prosecute.”