It costs the taxpayer more than £60,000 a year to keep some of the UK’s most dangerous criminals locked up at Frankland prison, new figures show.
The jail, near the village of Brasside in County Durham, counts serial killers, rapists, murderers and terrorists among its inmates.
And the prison dubbed ‘Monster Mansion’ is home to twisted Ian Huntley, who murdered 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, and the Yorkshire Ripper.
Figures obtained via a Freedom of Information request show holding an inmate at the top security jail costs an average of £60,359 a year.
That means it costs around £165 a night - the same as an executive suite at a Hilton hotel in Newcastle.
But former prison officer Shaun Gettings, who worked at HMP Frankland for around 20 years, said prisoners don’t get to enjoy the same luxuries behind bars.
“All of Frankland is single man cells so they’ll get a bed, locker, toilet, wash basin, table, comfortable chair and a TV or PlayStation depending on privileges,” he said.
“It isn’t a nice place to be and many don’t like having the control taken away. It can be a hard place when the door closes.”
Mr Gettings said it costs more to house prisoners at Frankland than anywhere else in the region due to high security levels.
“It has double the man power and more officers per head than other prisons,” he said.
“In the Westgate Unit, it probably costs around £90,000 for a prisoner a year. It’s the rehabilitation unit for those spending a long time inside.
“They run anger management courses and see psychologists so they can progress in the future. At the same time they have prison officers watching them.
“It’s a lot less than Durham, the local jail, because they don’t need as much security and they’d have two, three or four people in a cell.”
The figures show it costs an average of £49,453 a year to house inmates at HMP Low Newton, which holds around 344 prisoners.
It is one of just 12 jails in the UK which holds female prisoners and counts serial killer Rose West as an inmate.
Meanwhile, it costs an average of £28,626 a year for an inmate at HMP Durham, which currently holds around 930 prisoners.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “The cost of running a prison is determined by a number of factors, so it would be wrong to make direct comparisons between establishments.
“Our high security prisons house some of the most challenging offenders in our custody, with specialist units in place to ensure the safety of staff and other prisoners.
“These additional measures mean the average cost of a prison place in these establishments is higher.
“Female prisons also operate very different regimes, with a higher staff to prisoner ratio and specific units in some prisons, such as mother and baby units.”
