New home is a 'hellhole where hard-drug dealers roam freely'

Jeffrey Archer's new home, the Victorian HM Prison Lincoln, earned notoriety when it was the subject of one of the Prison Service's most damning reports. There have been improvements in recent years but, according to inmates past and present, its "hellhole" reputation still holds true.

Lincoln prison has four main cell blocks holding about 500 remand and convicted prisoners and the perimeter wall has been considerably strengthened in recent years.

The last Prison Service report in 1997 said that the notorious A-wing had been reduced to a "no-go" area where hard-drug dealers roamed freely. Inmates "dictated their own culture" and staff were afraid to enter corridors.

The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, whose team carried out the inspection, said at the time: "You begin to wonder in which country and in what century what is being described is allowed to take place. When you realise that it is in England in 1997 you feel angry that this is being tolerated."

Mark Leech, editor of The Prisons Handbook, said: "It is still regarded by some as a bit of a hellhole really, an old Victorian prison which is overcrowded and understaffed and which has some pretty inhumane conditions.

"There are people there serving long prison sentences and others waiting to be sent somewhere else. He'll be there with the riff-raff of the prison system and it will be the most basic regime."