For the families of the Southport victims, Axel Rudakubana’s transfer from Belmarsh to Broadmoor feels like one final injustice. Instead of remaining inside Britain’s most notorious high-security prison, the child killer will now be held in the country’s best-known psychiatric hospital, prompting accusations that he has somehow secured gentler treatment.
Situated in Berkshire, Broadmoor has been providing care to mentally disturbed men for more than 150 years, and has housed a number of notorious patients, including Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper), Ronnie Kray and Robert Napper.
While it no doubt deserved its infamous – and often terrifying – reputation in the past, a new building opened in 2019. The wards are now modern, with more natural light than the old Victorian hospital they replaced, as well as landscaped gardens, a café and classrooms.
“There’s quite a lot of activity,” said one former patient in a 2024 documentary. “There’s the shop to go to once a week, there’s a swimming pool, a gym, a metal workshop, a ceramics workshop, a wood workshop, an electrical shop, a kitchen and gardens.”
As a result of this, lawyers acting for some of the Southport victims’ families have protested, saying the transfer showed Rudakubana had “played the system” by securing treatment in hospital rather than remaining in prison.
Duncan Harding, a consultant adolescent psychiatrist who worked at Broadmoor in the early 2000s, disputes this interpretation of events.
“It absolutely is a therapeutic place, but it will still feel like a punishment,” he says. “The idea that he may have ‘manipulated the system’ simply isn’t possible. He would have been assessed thoroughly, and the case discussed very carefully before any transfer.
“As a society, we are judged by the way we treat our criminals, and if someone is ill from a mental perspective, they should be treated. I understand the frustration from the public and the families, but it’s like when you have chest pain – you’re admitted to a hospital for treatment – and it should be the same for mental illness. We have to treat everyone like human beings.”
Still, compared with Belmarsh, where Rudakubana has been since his conviction in January 2025, life at Broadmoor certainly sounds more humane. Nicknamed “Hellmarsh” by Jeffrey Archer, a former MP, who was sent there after his perjury conviction in 2001, the south London prison originally housed 150 to 200 men, but that number has more than tripled to 726, across four main units.
Belmarsh gained prominence in the early 2000s for detaining terror suspects without charge or trial, earning it the epithet “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay”. Some of the nation’s most dangerous men are housed within its walls, including Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered Sir David Amess, and Kyle Clifford, the crossbow killer who killed three members of the Hunt family in 2024.
Daily life is often bleak and repetitive. Prisoners at Belmarsh can also be locked in their cells, which measure around 5.5 sq m, for up to 23 hours a day, with one hour’s recreation outside, while violence has become a long-term issue. According to the Independent Monitoring Board’s annual report in November 2024, there was a 22 per cent increase in the number of weapons found in the prison. In another report, more than 60 per cent of young prisoners said they had been restrained by guards.
And while some former patients at Broadmoor have described life on the wards as “harsh” – and talked about being forcibly woken by staff and drugged with powerful sedatives – the institution is now said to be oriented toward therapy and recovery rather than punishment.
“Broadmoor is often misrepresented as a prison rather than a high secure hospital,” said its former clinical director in 2014. “We treat mentally disordered men, not prisoners.”
Axel Rudakubana has been accused of ‘playing the system’ by securing treatment in a psychiatric hospital rather than remaining in a high-security prison – Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire
The food is also significantly better, and portions are said to be generous and occasionally even delicious, with multiple choices for a meal, including fresh fish, meats and cheeses. At Belmarsh, by contrast, there is a food budget of around £2 per inmate per day. According to Julian Assange, a former inmate, it’s usually porridge for breakfast, a thin soup for lunch (which could be served as early as 10.30am) and “not much else for dinner”.
Assange has also said that he had previously assumed that prison meant “communal meals at long tables, as in the movies”. Instead, Belmarsh’s warders often shove food into the cells for prisoners to eat alone.
Still, it is unlikely that Rudakubana will himself have much contact with the other men in his ward. “Although there are communal areas in Broadmoor where patients can mix, he will be assessed daily to see if any interaction is possible with others, and there will certainly be restrictions based on risk and the safety of staff and patients,” says Harding.
“He may also be secluded – in the same way you can be in prison – not only for others’ safety, but his own. Because he’s so high-profile, he’s liable to be attacked by others.”
For the families of Rudakubana’s victims, that is unlikely to ease the sense that justice has been somewhat diluted. But for those charged with treating mentally ill offenders, the transfer at least reflects an important principle of Britain’s criminal justice system – that even its most reviled inmates are entitled to treatment as well as punishment.