"He's TERRIFIED" | Henry Nowak's Killer REFUSES Ian Huntley's Prison Wing

Welcome back.I'm going to talk about Vikram Digwar.He's that Sikh who killed poor Henry Novak and then claimed that Henry Novak had subjected him to racist abuse, which was a complete lie.Meanwhile, the coppers, of course, handcuffed poor Henry.while he was dying, while he was choking on his own blood, and then sort of almost mocked him when he said, uh, I've been stabbed.Doesn't look like it, mate.

Uh, he had been stabbed, uh, and they didn't realize that for eight minutes, and he went on to die.Vikram Digwar serving a life sentence now.Uh, he's been, uh, caged in Franklin Prison, uh, a fairly notorious jail.Uh, but he was, uh, he got there and he said, right, you're going to A -wing prison.And apparently he went, no way!Someone was murdered there.

He was talking about Ian Huntley, you know, the Soham rapist and killer.Ian Huntley, a few months back, was attacked.viciously by a fellow inmate and died of his serious wounds.So Vikram Digua is refusing to go to the same wing where Ian Huntley was killed, which means he's been stuck in the segregation unit, which is apparently very, very grim.He's lost all of his privileges, isn't even allowed to watch the telly.And so jail is turning into a nightmare for him, which I guess is what it's supposed to be.

I hope it gets worse.Let's talk to criminal psychologist, Dr. David Holmes.Hello, David.

Hi there.

I mean, what is Vikram Digwar going through now?I mean, I did a story last week, similar in a way, you know, that awful man, Jamie Varley,the gay guy who adopted a baby poor little Preston Davey and then sexually abused the poor little kid to death he's he's in Wakefield Jail which is our the most notorious prison in Britain.It's called Monster Mansion.It's where all the worst criminals are kept.And he's in a terrible state, apparently, just sobbing, won't eat, blah, blah, blah.

Vikram Digwar is mortified by the idea he's going to be sent to, or was going to be sent to, a wing in Franklin Prison, where Ian Huntley was killed.So he's terrified.He says, someone got murdered there.So he's refusing to go there.So he's being held without privileges in the segregation wing, which is apparently like the worst bit of a terrible prison.But what will he be going through?

You know, I mean, until that terrible night in Southampton, I don't think he'd been in too much trouble.He's never done prison before.What's it like to suddenly be in jail and to know, a hellhole jail, and to know you've got to spend the rest of your life there.

I think really you're starting, well it's not so much a war, it's a survival game.But the guy wants comfort.The guy wants protection from the police, from the prison itself.And when you consider we put people in prison as a kind of, well, rehabilitation is the number one word, but I'm afraid it comes well down the list from keeping them from others and from harming others.Sorry to interrupt you, David.

Is rehabilitation the primary function of prison?I don't think it is. I think the primary function of prison is punishment.It's to take your freedom away, because you haveseriously broken the law.You are being punished.OK, rehabilitation is a nice subsidiary function of jail, but it's not the primary function.

The primary function is punishment, isn't it?

Oddly enough, no.The primary function, actually, is rehabilitation.

Hang on, where does punishment come in the list of functions of a prison?Way down the list?

Comes in at about number three.Well, I'm saying that's rubbish.That's rubbish.That's absolute garbage.

No, no, no.It's got to be punishment first, hasn't it?You know, judges don't say, I'm sentencing you to five years of rehabilitation.

They don't say that, do they?Well, the idea is to put people off.So deterrence is high in the list, which is what you're talking about, really.You deter people because you really don't want to go to prison.It's going to be awful.They're going to train you.

They're going to make you, you know, somebody who can get a job.Yeah, but they very rarely do, don't they?I think when it comes to lifers, there's no real intention.Exactly.Exactly.to keep them alive as best as possible.

There are other alternative approaches which I won't go into because they generate an awful lot of hatred.

Let's go back to Vikram Digwar if we can, David.To go back to that sort of question, as I said I did a similar story about that guy Jamie Varley last week and I always think it's a interesting, compelling story about what these people must be going through.Previously, people of ostensibly good character had never been to jail.Suddenly they are inthese hellhole prisons, the worst kind of prisons, Category A prisons, full of seriously dangerous people.They're really noisy, they scream, they shout.

What is Vikram Digwar going through as he experiences this at the beginning of what he now knows will be probably the next 25, 30 years of his life?

On the one hand, it's fear, fear day by day, fear, fear for the next day.However, it's also a search for control.The idea that he can grasp some kind of control from the situation to be able to govern himself to some degree, he will push and push hard, for all he's worth, basically, to do that, to keep himself as someone who can survive day to day, be confident that the next day he's going to be safe from attack.

Would you say then, David, that that may be at the root of what we're talking about?The reason that he has told the guards, the prison officers, I am not going to A wing, because that's where Ian Huntley got killed, That is a method by him to gain some kind of control over his predicament.Is that what we're talking about?Yes.

Yes.from, you know, Prisons Memorial, there've always been people that will try and control the situation.Brady was an expert at this.He would actually control the situation from the point of view of someone who's powerless.So it's one of those things where you're not always sure if you're actually grasping for the right thing, because needless to say, being in segregation is a massive punishment itself, to be honest.people survive quite well on an ordinary wing and they get the usual kind of privileges and In order to be able to survive years and years and years Locked up and they get the chance to do, you know job Creation schemes and all that kind of thing.

Um, but in isolation you you have a radio You can read books if you want to.

He can't.he can't he's lost his privileges he's not allowed television books or anything because he's refusing to go to a wing so I wonder how long he will hold out with that but of course both people like Jamie Varley that we're talking about just now and Vikram Digwar they face an additional terror because there's a target on their back isn't there all these prisoners many of them serving life you've got nothing to lose they'll gain themselves brownie points as status by trying to kill Vikram Degua?

Yes, you know, this kind of target on your back.The idea that someone through notoriety alone, somebody who's high in the news, who's made the papers for some reason, will become a target.Someone where you have a sense that you're carrying the justice for the ordinary population, for the ordinary man on the street, as opposed to the justice system, you then feel as though you have the right to harm, to kill these individuals.You know, Sutcliffe was attacked.You've got most notorious have been attacked in some way, shape or form.And of course, with Huntley, he was killed.

And he stood one prisoner up with an iron bar, that's it.And you're gone.But in the case of Vikram, it's a kind of game that he's got to kind of play, because he knows he stands a chance against...They are secretive thugs.They are people that are used to violence.There are people that can dish out violence very quickly and give a chance.

And it would probably be the thinnest of chances he'd be dead.

Yeah.I mean, I don't hold out much hope for Vikram Digwar or Jamie Varley.They are both in really serious jails and there will be a target on their backs.And I suspect those target will be hit before too long.Don't celebrate that, of course.But that is a A chilling fact of life in these prisons.

David, great to talk to you.Thank you very much.Always a pleasure.David Holmes there, Dr. David Holmes there, a criminal psychologist.