Lucy Letby was fast-tracked to enhanced prisoner status that allows her to have extra cash to spend on treats like sweets and chocolate and more time outside her cell, the Mail can reveal.
Letby has been given a cleaning job and her privileged status allows her a visit every week – twice as many as standard prisoners, a source said.
All prisoners, regardless of their crimes, are automatically given standard status when they arrive following their sentencing.
But the former neonatal nurse convicted of killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven more was moved straight from her induction at HMP Bronzefield to the prison’s unit four, the source said.
The unit is solely for enhanced prisoners, who make up roughly 25 per cent of the jail’s population.
She shared the unit with a married former prison officer jailed after she was filmed having sex with an inmate, the source said.
Linda De Sousa Abreu, 31, was also fast-tracked straight to the unit for her own protection – given she was a former guard at HMP Wandsworth in southwest London.
Lucy Letby was immediately given ‘enhanced’ prisoner status when she arrived at HMP Bronzefield
In the same enhanced unit as Letby was former prison officer Linda de Sousa Abreu, who was jailed for having sex with an inmate in a cell but was released after five months
Sources said Letby was being held in unit four at HMP Bronzefield women’s prison in Ashford
As an enhanced prisoner, Letby is permitted £33 a week to spend in the prison canteen, whereas standard prisoners have £19.80 and those placed on ‘basic’ as a punishment are allowed just £5.50.
The canteen menu is standardised across Britain’s prisons and one from HMP Chelmsford from 2023 shows Kinder Bueno chocolate available for 60p, Snickers Bars for 80p and 59p for a can of Pepsi.
Status reviews take place for prisoners every 28 days but it is understood Letby has remained enhanced since she arrived at Bronzefield.
A prison source said the real reason she had been upgraded is because she would not be safe from other prisoners anywhere else in the jail.
‘Lucy is reserved and very quiet, she isn’t really a problem with staff,’ they said.
‘It grates with officers though – she’s committed the worst crimes possible and here she is on the enhanced unit with all the benefits that come with it.
‘Again the real reason she is here is safety, she would be attacked on any other unit.’
Letby pictured during her arrest at home in Chester on July 3, 2018
Letby was on duty at the time of 25 deaths and collapses at the Countess of Chester Hospital (pictured, file photo)
Pictured: Court artist sketch of Letby giving evidence in the dock at Manchester Crown Court in August 2023
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said they could not disclose information on individual prisoners.
Letby, 35, has been in custody since November 2020 but was given a ‘whole life order’ in August 2023.
She only the fourth female criminal in British history to have no hope of parole following her conviction for killing the babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Letby maintains her innocence, and high profile figures including former health secretary Jeremy Hunt have called for her case to be re-examined.
Following her sentence, the Thirlwall inquiry was launched into how she was able to commit the crimes.
Writing in the Mail, Mr Hunt insisted he was not saying Letby was innocent and that the pain of the victims’ families ‘must also be at the forefront of our minds.’
‘But most of all they deserve the truth,’ he said.
‘And recently some have begun to cast doubt on what actually happened.
‘They are not conspiracy theories dredged up from far-flung reaches of the internet.’
Mr Hunt, health secretary between 2012 and 2018, said the most disturbing evidence was from 14 paediatric specialists who ruled that the deaths or injuries of the newborns were down to natural causes or errors in medical care.
‘Taken together – and it pains me to say it – this analysis raises serious and credible questions about the evidence presented in court,’ he added.
