Ex-Liverpool crime boss 'Juicebomb John' wants to fix the prison system
"I want prisoners to feel loved again... There are so many lads in prison who want to change, we need to give them a chance"
A Liverpool man who was jailed for 12-years after heading up a drug gang is now behind a scheme which he hopes can help solve the crisis in the prison system.
John Burton, from Vauxhall, was sentenced to nine and a half years jail in 2012 after masterminding a £1m conspiracy which supplied cannabis, cocaine and amphetamine to street dealers in South Wales and the West Midlands.
John, who enjoyed a lavish lifestyle funded by a thriving drugs business, was eventually jailed after a police surveillance operation smashed his gang.
And the Liverpool man later had an extra 30 months added to his jail sentence after police unravelled an elaborate web of money laundering.
John had channelled dirty cash through a friend to buy a luxury apartment in the south of Spain – complete with its own fleet of high powered motors on the drive.
"Smack was rife"
John said that when he was a drug dealer he pumped weights relentlessly and took steroids to increase his weight to around 16 stone.
He told the ECHO that his nickname with other Liverpool crooks at the time was 'Juicebomb John.'
He said: "I grew up on a north Liverpool council estate in the 1980s where smack was rife. When I was 16 there were two kinds of people on our estate. Heroin addicts and drug dealers.
Designer clothes and fancy cars
"I looked at the state of the addicts and I saw the dealers in the designers clothes and fancy cars. I knew which I wanted to be."
But the Liverpool man decided to turn his back on crime when he saw how his young family suffered while he was locked up for drug offences.
Towards the end of his sentence John spent his time planning a way to fix the prison system and break the pattern of repeat offending.
And John has now offered some direct advice to the government about how to deal with the current crisis gripping the prison system. There are growing concerns about the level of violence and drug use in prisons.
Last weekend the Mirror newspaper revealed the sordid reality of life at Walton jail. Video footage showed two prisoners left helpless after smoking Spice, and then being humiliated by laughing lags.
Watch the shocking video below
READ MORE: Shocking footage shows inmates at Liverpool prison on Spice being humiliated and strippedHe said to the ECHO: "The Prime Minister and Justice Secretary should stop listening to people who run prisons and start listening to people who have been through the system. We are the ones who really understand it.
"When I was inside the Spice thing was just starting out. But now its really bad. I saw the story in the Mirror last week about Walton and it was horrendous.
"Make prisoners feel loved again"
"I think prison violence can be reduced by giving prisoners something to feel good about. Let's use technology to give them contact with their families.
"Making prisoners happier would reduce some of the violence. Just think of the pleasure a one minute family video would give prisoners.
“The system at the moment is chaotic, it’s a mess, and something has to change to stop the pattern of reoffending. We need to get this prison system out of the 19th century and take it into the 21st century. That is what I’m going to do.
John went into the system as a Category A prisoner inside Strangeways, where he mixed with convicted murderers and terrorists.
Prison bosses then decided to move him outside of the north west because he was deemed to have too much of an influence within the local criminal fraternity.
He spent the final 19 months of his prison sentence in Isle of Sheppey, where he created the blueprint for a business aimed helping prisoners on the inside and outside.
“I deserved to be in prison"
He said : “I deserved to be in prison, I did something stupid and I had to pay the price for it, but I’ve got two kids and seeing my family travel 17 hours for a visit killed me.
"It wasn’t their fault I was selling drugs but they paid for it, and it was what they went through that made me want to change myself and the prison system.”
John said he was determined to break the cycle of re-offending, particularly amongst young offenders.
Using his own experience and with the support of the governor, he chose to spend his evenings working on ideas and carrying out research in the prison library rather than playing pool with his mates on the wing.
He said: “The prison governor gave me permission to spend my evenings studying in my cell and in the library. I knew what I had was going to change the way prisons are run in this country for good.”
"Permanent solution"
When he finally walked out a free man in early 2017, John set up a non-for profit company called Inside Connections.
He said: “It was the right time to do it, the way the prison system is now. There are so many lads in prison who want to change, we need to give them a chance.
"I think this will alter the way the prison system works for good. When you’re in prison you see the same people who were there 10 years ago.
"I don’t want that anymore and I think there’s something we can do to find a permanent solution to the resettlement problem once they come out of prison."
The first part of Inside Connections is a mobile app which allows families to stay in touch with loves ones while they are in the prison system.
He said: "We are trying to increase the use of laptops and other technology in all prisons."
The second part of the scheme is geared toward providing released prisoners with the right support.
John plans to open a network of halfway houses around the country offering not just a place to live, but training and educational courses to help former prisoners get back on the right track.
The first Inside Connections halfway house in Blackburn is due to open this autumn, taking two young offenders and two older offenders.
"I talk to lads from Liverpool gangs all the time"
John said: “I talk to lads from Liverpool gangs all the time. One lad came to me for help and he told me he was going to go and live with his mum for a bit.
"But I knew that would not work because he would end up smoking weed and hanging around with his old mates. That is why the half-way house in Blackburn is so important.
“We’ll take referrals from prisons, people who are rehabilitated and want to change, and then we’ll risk assess them.
“We can’t take anyone on drugs, everyone will have to agree to random drugs testing while they’re with us, and we won’t take high dependency residents such as sex offenders because they have different levels of risk and need a different type of help – what we’re looking for is people who are trapped in a cycle of re-offending that they really want to break.
“I made and lost over a million pounds "
“At the end of the 16 weeks, we’ll aim to find them a place to live and a job so they don’t fall straight back to their old lives.”
John was stripped of all the money he made from crime when he was in prison, and Inside Connections has been funded through private investment.
He said: "They took everything off me – nightclubs, shops, houses, cars, money – I made and lost over a million pounds and came out with nothing. But fortunately there are people who believe in what I’m doing and what I’ve built and want to support it."
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