As a child, there was a thrilling danger about growing up close to the open prison known as HMP North Sea Camp. My friends and I would ride our bikes up to nearby Freiston, Lincolnshire, which is where the prison stood between the town and the marshland coast. We would dare each other to inch closer to the gates, only talking in whispers. When the danger felt too close we would turn and pedal our little legs as fast as possible, never looking back until we were sure we were long from view.
This week, an inmate escaped from the category D prison, which has minimal security and allows eligible prisoners to spend most of their day away from the prison. The sex offender Paul Robson, 56, absconded on Sunday 13 February, spending four days on the run before being arrested on Thursday in Skegness. Robson had been given a life sentence in 2000 for attempted rape and indecent sexual assault.
Robson’s escape comes as no surprise to those living in close proximity to the North Sea Camp – who are quite used to prisoners fleeing from the site, given there have been more than 100 reported in the past decade. My best friend recalls numerous occasions when the police have come knocking at the door of her family home to look for escapees. In 2013 the town was aghast after Alan Wilmot, then 49, raped a local woman while on day release.
When I was at school in the 1990s, it was common knowledge that prisoners came in during the weekends or holidays to do painting and fixing work. To be fair, the school really needed it, but that about 60% of North Sea Camp’s 400 inmates are sex offenders made their presence in our school feel chilling. A friend who still lives locally tells me that they also worked at her secondary school. “One particular man called Dave had killed his wife with a saucepan after finding her in bed with his best friend,” she says. “We would ask them what they’d done to be inside as inquisitive teens.”
I have twin 17-year-old sisters, one of whom attends my old school now, and as we chatted on the phone earlier this week I found myself telling them to do the opposite of what I did when I was younger – to stay at home. “It is really worrying,” one replied, adding they’d been glued to the local police Facebook page for updates. “The prisoners have been painting fences near our house the past couple of weeks, so we could have walked past him before he legged it,” she added. Police warned that Robson should not be approached as he “can cause real harm to anyone he comes across”.
It’s more than reasonable, then, to ask why someone like Robson, described by a sentencing judge as a “menace to women and children”, was moved to an open prison in the first place. The answer lies with the Parole Board for England and Wales. The idea of open prisons is to build trust between offenders and the system; inmates are invited to complete their sentences under minimal supervision and aren’t usually locked up in cells. Growing up I was supportive of the idea that inmates could take up employment while on day release, helping them towards successful rehabilitation – which can only help bring to an end the cyclical relationship between prisons, poverty, underemployment, isolation and ultimately re-offending. But for dangerous sex offenders like Robson and Wilmot, was their move to open prison really appropriate?
In 2015, Wilmot – who was first convicted of raping four women and committing a string of robberies – was given four additional life sentences and 15 years without a chance of parole for the crimes committed while on day release from North Sea Camp. The judge, who heard that Wilmot had received a warning for his deteriorating behaviour, said he was “very concerned as to how anybody could ever have thought it was safe to release him”. The Ministry of Justice overhauled the process for allowing prisoners out on day release as a result, and commissioned an independent investigation looking at strengthening the system.
The MoJ revealed in 2020 that, since 2015, an estimated 631 inmates have absconded from institutions like North Sea Camp across the UK – in England there are 13 open prisons for men and two for women. In 2016 convicted murderer Darren Jackson, 51, sparked a nationwide manhunt after fleeing HMP Sudbury in Derbyshire, after being moved there despite a documented history of attempted breakouts. He was sentenced to life in 1986 for killing 29-year-old mother-of-three Gill Ellis as she walked home in Burnley, Lancashire. Eighteen men who escaped in this time period were convicted rapists, seven were convicted of manslaughter and four caused death by dangerous driving. While absconding rates have fallen over the years, families of victims like Ellis are perplexed by decisions that quite obviously leave the public unsafe.
A report promised by summer 2021 from justice minister Lucy Frazer QC, looking to review the parole system in England in the face of calls for reform, has yet to materialise. Labour’s shadow justice secretary Steve Reed wrote to the lord chancellor, Dominic Raab, this week to seek assurances over public safety after this latest blunder by the Parole Board.
But more than assurances, we need reform. Usually, overturning decisions deemed dangerous, especially to women, like the subsequently overturned release of John Worboys in 2017 for example, come down to the efforts of public protest. Victims of these offenders are rarely told when their attackers are given day release or, in Worboys’ case, released on licence.
My sisters are now the ones living near to that Frieston border that me and my friends used to cross on our bikes, and speak in the same hushed voices about the close danger they too can sense. Robson may have been caught again, but while the system remains inadequate, there are still a whole host of other dangerous offenders putting another generation at risk. As it ever was, that peripheral fear – a chill, just off in the distance – remains.
Zoe Beaty is a freelance writer
