HM Prison Wakefield

His Majesty's Prison Wakefield is a Category A men's prison in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. The prison has been nicknamed the "Monster Mansion" along with HM Prison Frankland due to the large number of high-profile, high-risk sex offenders and murderers held there.

Wakefield Prison was originally built as a house of correction in 1594. Most of the current prison buildings date from the Victorian era. The current prison was designated a dispersal prison in 1967, holding 144 inmates and is the oldest of the dispersal prisons still operating across England and Wales.

The English Dialect Dictionary indicates references to Wakefield were often short for referring to the long-standing prison (e.g. "being sent to Wakefield" meant being sent to prison).

During the First World War, Wakefield Prison was used as a Home Office work camp. The ordinary criminal prisoners were removed, and the new influx were sentenced to two or more years' imprisonment for refusing to obey military orders. After the closure of Dyce Work Camp in October 1916, Wakefield Prison was also used to intern conscientious objectors. In September 1918, a group of conscientious objectors took advantage of a slackening in the prison regime that occurred towards the end of the war, by rebelling and refusing to undertake any work. They issued a list of demands for better treatment, known as the Wakefield Manifesto.

As a high-security prison, Wakefield was used to house IRA prisoners intermittently during the 20th century. In some cases in the 1950s, the IRA attempted to free the prisoners, such as Cathal Goulding in 1956 (the attempt was aborted when the sirens sounded) and James Andrew Mary Murphy in 1959 (who was freed). During a hunger strike by Provisional IRA prisoners, Frank Stagg died in Wakefield Prison on 12 February 1976. The case brought international media attention as the Irish Government denied Stagg's last request for a military funeral march from Dublin to Ballina, and instead arranged for the Irish police to bury him secretly. On 1 March 1976, Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the Wilson ministry, announced that those people convicted of causing terrorist offences would no longer be entitled to Special Category Status, which was challenged during later hunger strikes.

In 2001, it was announced that a new ultra-secure unit was to be built at Wakefield Prison. The unit was to house the most dangerous inmates within the British prison system, and was the first such unit of its kind to be built in the United Kingdom.^{[better source needed]}

In March 2004, an inspection report from Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons criticised staff at Wakefield Prison for being disrespectful to inmates. The report claimed that the prison was "over-controlled", and a third of the prison's inmates claimed to have been victimised.

On 11 October 2025, inmate Ian Watkins, the former lead singer and frontman of the rock band Lostprophets, died from a knife attack at the prison. Two fellow inmates were arrested and appeared in court on suspicion of murder. The attack happened the month after a report had found that violence in the prison had "increased markedly". According to the report there had been a 62% rise in violent incidents and a 72% increase in serious assaults since the last inspection in 2022, and older inmates felt unsafe around "a growing cohort of younger prisoners". On 5 November 2025, just under a month after Watkins death, Kyle Bevan, who was serving life with a 28 year minimum term for the murder of his partners two-year-old daughter, was found dead in his cell at the prison. Three fellow inmates, including Mark Fellows, were charged with murder over the incident.