Prison GANGSTER libraries

Memoirs by the notoriously violent jailbird Charles Bronson, the Krays, and former drug smuggler David McMillan's Escape, which tells how he broke out of Thailand's Klong Prem prison.The party also criticised prison libraries for stocking the autobiography of "mad" Frankie Fraser - the legendary gangster who was a peer of the Krays - and bare knuckle fighter/armed robber Roy Shaw's Pretty Boy, as well as Hitler's Mein Kampf."Jack Straw has said that he wants to prevent criminals from profiting from their memoirs, yet prison libraries have been purchasing their books to lend to other criminals," said shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve. "It beggars belief that books glorifying crime and violence are being made freely available to prisoners."Party research also found that inmates in HMP Erlestoke in Wiltshire are able to borrow books including Nine Lives by Bill Mason, subtitled "confessions of a master jewel thief", Charles Bronson's memoir Bronson, Pretty Boy by Roy Shaw and Dennis Stafford's Fun-loving Criminal, subtitled "the autobiography of a gentleman gangster".Gloucester Prison library, meanwhile, stocks Gitta Sereny's Cries Unheard: the story of Mary Bell, Charlie Kray's Doing the Business and former gangster Dave Courtney's Dodgy Dave's Little Black Book.