Google News Boris Becker in a INSANE PRISON: drugs, violence, rats and overcrowding
by LORENZO CIOTTI | VIEW 12850
Boris Becker is serving his sentence in Wandsworth prison, which according to the British media is in tragic conditions. The prison in which Becker is held, according to the tabloid Daily Mail, is a 170-year-old Victorian building, overcrowded and infested with mice.
According to an official report written by Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of British prisons, it is one of the most violent prisons in the country. "Inmates spend more than 22 hours a day in dilapidated cells and there are only six showers for 86 cells.
Drug use and mental health problems are very high: a group of inmates were described as walking blinking in the sunlight after more than a week of solitary confinement." Prison staff used force 1,295 times in the reporting period, nearly four times a day.
Prison sources say the tennis star will likely spend up to fifteen days in a Category B prison before being transferred to a Category C prison. After being sentenced to Southwark Crown Court, Becker was taken in a prison van for the 45-minute journey through South London to the prison, less than two miles from Wimbledon Center Court.
Boris Becker's condemns
Boris Becker was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for fraudulent bankruptcy. The German actually faced up to seven years in prison, but the Southwark judge decided to inflict 30 months in prison on Becker.
The three-time Wimbledon champion had been accused of bankruptcy by the London court, the Bankruptcy Court, due to a heavy debt (about 6 million euros, ed) that he was no longer able to pay. Attempts to pay off the debt by mortgaging various real estate properties, in particular one in Mallorca, proved useless.
Becker was unable to pay the repayment plan installments to the lenders, who obviously decided to sue him. The former world number one will serve half the sentence in prison and the remaining period of detention under a semi-release regime.
