Overview
- The Court of Appeal on June 30 substituted a five-year extra term for Declan Winkless after ruling his original sentence for smuggling and misconduct was unduly lenient.
- Winkless is already serving an 11-year sentence for aggravated burglary and the new five-year term will run consecutively to that sentence.
- Former prison officer Alicia Novas kept her three-year sentence after admitting she smuggled cannabis, tobacco and two mobile phones into HMP Five Wells and HMP Peterborough and passed confidential intelligence to Winkless.
- Police and regional prisons investigators built the case on a recovered phone, more than 2,800 messages exchanged before Novas’s arrest in December 2024 and a Snapchat clip of sexual activity that she and Winkless recorded and circulated.
- The Solicitor General referred the original sentence to the Court of Appeal, a move that highlights official concern about staff breaches, the risk to prison informants and wider security weaknesses in the prison system.