Killers and kidnappers ‘raking in thousands in benefits while locked up in secure hospitals’ like Ashworth

VIOLENT criminals are raking in thousands of pounds in state benefits if they are held in high security hospitals rather than prisons, it has emerged.

Hundreds of patients at maximum security hospitals are able to amass a small fortune in benefits, regardless of the crimes they have committed.

Ministry of Justice figures show almost 3,000 “potentially dangerous” offenders are eligible for “indefinite” periods of time.

They can claim Employment Support Allowance (ESA), which is paid to those unable to work due to illness or disability.

Nicola Edgington, who killed her own mother, received around £8,000 in benefits back payments on release from a secure psychiatric unit.

Six years later, in 2011, she killed Sally Hodkin, 58, with a butcher's knife in Bexleyheath, in South London.

Len Hodkin, whose mum was killed by Edgington, told the Daily Telegraph: "I would understand paying benefits if they were living in the community but it cannot be right when they are being housed, fed and looked after in a secure hospital at taxpayers’ expense."

Other criminals detained under hospital orders who are entitled to claim benefits include Humphrey Burke, who killed a woman in London in 2016 by repeatedly stamping on her head, and Dean Cotton, who tried to kidnap a 17-year-old girl in May last year as she walked along a street in Stoke-on-Trent.

Last November Detective Constable Samantha Keaton, who was drafted into Ashworth High Security Hospital in Merseyside to help combat spiralling levels of violence against staff, found the majority of patients were getting around £70-£100 a week in benefits.

She said: "Some of them have savings of tens of thousands of pounds as they receive benefits but nothing is going out."

At a mental health and policing conference DC Keaton admitted some Ashworth patients had been known to ‘high-five’ each other after being ‘let off’ by the courts for attacks on nurses and staff committed with ‘impunity’.

Ashworth confirmed almost half – 94 – of its patients received benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions, averaging £90 a week.

MPs and campaigners for victims have called for the practice to be stopped.

Julian Hendy, founder of the charity hundredfamilies, said: “Dangerous offenders who commit very serious crimes should not be rewarded for their crimes, particularly when victims’ families have to struggle so much to get appropriate support."

There are around 3,000 "restricted" patients in secure psychiatric hospitals and so the charity estimated the annual benefits could be in the millions.

Mike Penning, a former Conservative justice minister, said: “How can it be right that someone who is a murderer, whether in prison or in a secure mental hospital, should get benefits?

“We need desperately to put the victims first."

The Department for Work and Pensions said: “The bottom line is that they have been dealt with under the Mental Health Act so they are not prisoners, they are patients.”

An MoJ official added: “A hospital order is not a punishment; the offender is effectively diverted away from the criminal justice system and into the secure hospital system for treatment.”

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