DESPITE being locked away for their crimes, some of Britain’s worst criminals will be enjoying a VERY merry Christmas.
Festive cards laced with drugs, super-strength moonshine and surprising perks enjoyed by serial killers mean Britain’s lags are looking forward to a good time behind bars.
Not content with a free three-course Christmas dinner, chocolate yule logs and other goodies, some of the UK’s 89,1000 lags are resorting to illegal thrills.
Some have launched terror sieges, including one that caused £300,000-worth of damage and “completely wrecked a wing” on December 25 .
Another lag who was having a secret affair with a prison officer, gave himself a Christmas day treat by soliciting a sex act in his cell.
And even serial killers seek special treatment in the festive period, with one demanding goose and salmon en croute instead of turkey and two notorious lovers exchanging creepy gifts.
Reformed drug kingpin Stuart Reid tells us the main focus for many inmates is “getting off their heads” with cell-brewed moonshine and drugs.
He tells us: “There’s no Christmas crackers, staff dressed up as Santa Claus or Elf on the Shelf but what there is a lot of is hooch and drugs.
“Criminals getting alcohol is one of their biggest fears in prison at Christmas and around that time of year.
“If it’s just one p***head they can deal with them but if it’s 10 or 20 then that can easily turn into something outrageous and serious violence can break out.”
They will likely be trying to avoid violence like the scenes at HMP Humber on Christmas day, back in 2018, when eight lags sparked a riot that flooded a whole wing.
The raiders had ripped pipe-fittings off walls, lobbed pool balls, destroyed furniture and tried to break into guards’ offices by chucking a fridge freezer against a glass window. Fortunately, it didn’t smash.
It caused such “an incredible amount of damage”, estimated at £300,000, that prisoners had to be transferred to other jails.
Knowing the increased likelihood of violence sparked by drugs and alcohol, cell searches are increased.
However, lags still find ways to smuggle things in. Last Christmas, 35 prisoners were found high on drugs at Scotland’s HMP Glenochil.
Years earlier, HMP Coldingley, in Surrey, had to ban Christmas cards after discovering several impregnated with Spice, a synthetic cannabis, and other drugs disguised as glitter.
But booze is most popular according to Reid, who wrote the memoir 10 Years A Cat A about his criminal exploits and time behind bars.
He claims corrupt officers used to smuggle in two-litre Volvic water bottles filled with vodka for £200 a time – netting them a tidy £170 profit if they bought the spirit from Lidl.
X-rated antics
For the lags who have groomed prison officers for ‘relationships’, they may be receiving smuggled gifts or sexual favours for Christmas too.
An anonymous guard previously told the MailOnline that there are “actually lots of places they (prison officers and criminals) could potentially have sex”.
They listed spots including inside cupboards, medical rooms and even cells if they’re “happy to live dangerously”.
The latter was the choice of Linda De Sousa Abreu, who was famously filmed romping with a lag in HMP Wandsworth, and she’s not alone.
I also get handed back the sock I hang outside my cell every year. But it always comes back empty. That lazy b*****d Santa never comes to prison
Charles Bronson
HMP Berwyn’s Emily Watson performed a sex act on her drug dealer beau John McGee on Christmas Day, in 2019. She was later jailed for a year over the relationship.
Serial killer gifts
Despite their harrowing crimes, Britain’s most repulsive criminals enjoy the festive period too – including Moors Murderer Myra Hindley, who regularly exchanged Christmas cards and gave presents.
Former inmate Linda Calvey told us: “She once gave me a chocolate box, without any chocolates inside, because she thought it was ‘lovely’ and made of velvet material.
“I couldn’t believe it. I thought, ‘What am I going to do with this?’ She also gave me a cardigan once to keep me warm, it was vile but I felt I had to say thank you.”
The child killer and her twisted lover Ian Brady allegedly exchanged gifts during their incarceration, with her sending him a handmade bookmark to open on December 25.
In return, Brady gave her a locket that he bought for £3 and 10 shillings – the equivalent of £55 today – and filled it with locks of his hair.
The late Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who died from Covid in 2020, used to boast about getting 50 Christmas cards a year and even demanded lavish Christmas meals.
In 2015, the monster wanted goose instead of turkey, then three years later asked for fancy salmon en croute.
Referring to the latter, a prison source told the Daily Star: “Of course Sutcliffe is whingeing that he wants something different to everyone else, despite there being plenty of perfectly good options.’
Meanwhile Britain’s most violent lag Charles Bronson revealed he would kick off his Christmas day by doing 100 press-ups, squats and sit-ups “all in the nude”.
He told The Mirror: “I also get handed back the sock I hang outside my cell every year. But it always comes back empty. That lazy b*****d Santa never comes to prison.”
Meanwhile Scouse serial killer Robert Maudsley, who has spent his incarceration in solitary confinement, threatened to “kill as many paedophiles as he could” if allowed onto a wing on Christmas Day.
‘Moonshine & spice’
Ex-lag Reid tells us inmates are eager to get their hands of £80-a-litre moonshine – brewed using stockpiled fruit, juice cartons, sugar, yeast from scraps of bread, and water.
However, the drink, called ‘hooch’, can be deadly due to its high alcohol content. Some are made more lethal by adding alcohol hand sanitiser for “an extra punch”.
“There was loads of hooch,” former senior prison officer Jo Taylor tells us. “We were worried it could kill them. It’s really dangerous and someone necking it is even deadlier.”
Reid reveals lags have spent months brewing the booze in bin-liners and stolen five-litre washing detergent bottles.
Some pay prisoners who work as cleaner to hide it in bins, others bribe drug addicts with a £10 piece of spice-impregnated paper, to hold their hooch,
“The most inventive used knives to take out cladding on the walls or removed kitchen tile panels and hid hooch bags behind it, before sealing them back up,” Reid says.
Hooch was discovered 8,450 times in the year up to March 2025, down eight per cent annually, but distillery equipment seizures rose by 2 per cent to 671 incidents.
It is often mixed into a squash to conceal the ‘vodka-like’ fluid’s odour or combined with other soft drinks on offer, to create a low-budget cocktail.
More than 215 litres of illegal booze was seized at HMP Guys Marsh, in Dorset, back in 2022, where one lag had stockpiled 15 empty plastic bottles on his windowsill for the brewing process.
Some people, who work hard all year, can’t afford a proper Christmas dinner and pensioners have to live in freezing cold houses, while prisoners get everything
Jo Taylor
A decade earlier, it was such a “serious issue” that HMP Lewes, in East Sussex, rationed fruit, tinned fruit and syrups.
Similarly HMP Dartmoor, in Devon banned Marmite after finding it was being used as yeast for fermentation.
Jo tells us other lags, who had stockpiled heroin, peeled fruit to mask the drug’s “horribly scent, that smells like really bad feet” over the festive period.
Chocolates, DIY roasts & karaoke
Jo claims female prisoners get a better deal than men and that staff “go out of our way to make it a nice day for them”.
She said ladies used to enjoy a full English breakfast, both on Christmas and Boxing Day, followed be a full roast dinner lunch with dessert and a picky-bits style supper.
Warders even put on competitions and quizzes where crooks could earn prizes – typically telephones tokens, chocolates, biscuits and coffee.
She added: “One year, we had karaoke where the girls would sing and we would vote who should win, it was a bit like The X Factor.”
Jo acknowledges it’s an insult to families hit by the cost of living crisis but says it stopped lags fighting.
“Some people who work hard all year can’t afford a proper Christmas dinner and pensioners have to live in freezing cold houses, while prisoners get everything,” she adds.
Shockingly, lags can also purchase goodies from festive catalogues seen by The Sun – one from 2019 sold £4.99 Quality Street tins, Terry’s Chocolate Oranges for £1.49 and two-for-£1 shortbread biscuits.
Another from years earlier, showed Christmas cards being flogged for £65p, travel size Monopoly and Battleship for £4.99, watches for £11.99 and sports car calendars for £1.99.
The Sun also saw lags’ Christmas menus and food they could buy to create luxury DIY Christmas dinner instead that could see them enjoying a multi-meat roast and countless courses.
The list, from 2014, included joints of beef for £7.35 and gammon for £3.39, shoulders of New Zealand lamb for £8.55 and pork for £6.15, whole chickens for £3.69, baby back ribs for £2.75 and red snapper for £2.05.
Despite the apparent perks, Reid, who spent decades behind bars, insists Christmas is not pleasant, noting there’s an “eerie vibe” and “a solemn atmosphere with a heavy edge to it”.
For many it makes them confront their own mortality Reid claims, adding: “If you’re lucky in life you’ll get 70 Christmases, which isn’t a lot if you think about how quickly they come and go.
“If you have just been sentenced to spend 35 of them behind bars it’s a grave leveller, it really does awaken you to your own mortality and some react badly to it.
“While they may put on extra stuff like a yule log, satsumas or other treats, it’s a strange time and you never feel further away from your family than at Christmas.”
You can buy Stuart Reid’s memoir 10 Years A Cat A here.
