A memoir · Working title
Crime andpunishment
From organised crime to organised mind.
Ten years for a drugs conspiracy. Two years in Britain’s most violent prison, and a front-row seat to the two largest prison riots televised on national TV since Strangeways. The prime minister who got the facts wrong. And, at thirty-nine, the diagnosis that finally explained a lifetime of chaos.
He was offered a book deal in 2021 and turned it down. He doesn’t do things the way the system sets them up: he waited, finished the story, and is publishing it independently.
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E-book here and on Amazon · Release date to be announced
A man who never feltat the wheel ofhis own life.
Luke Jewitt grew up in Essex, the eldest of three brothers, on construction sites with his dad from fourteen. Quick, restless, good at selling and hungry for more. School never held him. Neither did rules.
By his late twenties he was living two lives: a salon and a building business on one side; on the other, a world of cash, risk and men who settled things their own way. In February 2015 armed police came through the door at dawn. In July 2016 he was sentenced to ten years.
The book follows him from the cells of HMP Bedford to HMP Birmingham in the years it became known as the most violent prison in the country, with a front-row seat to the two largest prison riots televised on national TV since Strangeways. How it really works inside: the drugs, the gangs, the economy that runs on tobacco and phones, the officers who held it together and the system that let them down. And how he read that system, earned the respect of the wings, and worked his way up it.
He walked out on 19 October 2020 and built at the same speed as before: clinics, crypto launches, then AI. But the drive that built the businesses was the same one that had put him in prison, and he still didn’t understand it. In 2025 a psychiatrist did: ADHD. It didn’t excuse a single choice he made. For the first time, it made sense.
- Written
- Inside, on an iPhone
- Length
- Nearly 100,000 words
- Setting
- HMP Bedford, HMP Birmingham, open prison, Essex
- Publishing
- Independent. A 2021 book deal was turned down
- Format
- E-book, here and on Amazon
What the papers said
The worst prisonin England.
Two years inside the most violent prison in the country, and a front-row seat to the two largest prison riots televised on national TV since Strangeways. This is what the papers saw from outside.
- BBC News20 Aug 2018Birmingham Prison: Government takes over from G4SViolence, rat droppings and an overpowering smell of drugs are found at England's “worst prison”.Read ↗
- BBC News4 Dec 2018Birmingham Prison: Inspection reveals ‘zombie warzone’Birmingham Prison was “exceptionally violent” around the time the government took it over, inspectors say.Read ↗
- BBC News16 Dec 2016Riot officers enter HMP Birmingham amid disturbances“There's no staff, too much Mamba, and people are dying.”Read ↗
- IBTimes UK7 Nov 2016HMP Bedford riot successfully resolved after 6 hours, Prison Service to launch probeAround 200 inmates seized control of parts of the facility.Read ↗
What they couldn’t see. From the manuscript
“By the late summer of 2017, The Green had raced up to the top of the national rankings for most prison assaults in a year. It was now officially the most violent prison in the country.”
On HMP Birmingham, 2017
“I was treading on a thin tightrope between the gangs running much of the prison and the staff, who faced an uphill struggle to maintain proper control of the wings.”
On HMP Bedford, 2016
“I had started out as a nobody in the worst jail in the country, full of some of the baddest lads in the UK. And I left there having earned their respect.”
On leaving HMP Birmingham, 2018
“I was chairing meetings with around ten management staff and up to forty prison reps. All of a sudden I felt like I was back in the world of business, thriving in my natural habitat.”
On the reps committee he co-founded
The prime ministertook a swing.
“Ganglord”
“this shaven-skulled ganglord wallowing in his £140-a-day pampering session”What he called me
“Kingpin”
“This man was a kingpin of a sophisticated drugs importation and distribution network.”What he called me
“Nero”
“sprawling like Nero in his whirlpool bath”What he called me
The Daily Telegraph · 19 May 2019 · Boris Johnson
Read the column ↗“Letting drug dealers out of prison to go on spa breaks is criminally stupid”
“The case of convicted criminal Luke Jewitt, allowed out to undergo pamperings and visit aquariums, is an example of a justice system gone wrong.”
The correction the paper had to print
“was pushing huge quantities of cocaine and cannabis on to the streets”
“Mr Jewitt was in fact cleared of charges relating to cannabis.”
The prime minister wrote a whole column about me. It got the facts wrong. I was cleared of the cannabis, and the court found my role significant, not leading. I took it to the press regulator while I was still serving my sentence, and the Telegraph corrected it.
Sam Claflin, on the man behind his character in The Corrupted
“A real man who I was fortunate enough to have a chance to meet. He’s currently serving time in a prison somewhere in the country… It was, for me, an eye-opening meeting… being able to bend his ear about his experiences, and some of the stories he has to share.”
“What became very apparent in talking to this man in prison was that he believes that he made a mistake, and he is reformed.”
Inside the book
Eight momentsthat made the man.
01
The raid
Dawn, February 2015. The door goes in, and two lives collapse into one.
02
The riots
Bedford and Birmingham, 2016: the two largest prison riots televised since Strangeways, from a front-row seat.
03
The Green
Two years in HMP Birmingham, the most violent prison in the country, and how it really runs.
04
The economy
Tobacco, phones, debts and spice. Who controls what, and what it costs.
05
The Listener
Nights on call for men in crisis, and the night he cut a man down.
06
The champion
A prison debating team beats the universities, and an inmate wins best speaker.
07
The column
The prime minister gets the facts wrong in print, and the paper has to correct it.
08
The diagnosis
At thirty-nine, the word that explained a lifetime: ADHD.
The ending he didn’t see coming
UndiagnosedADHD.
The speed. The restlessness. The impulses he could never stop. For thirty-nine years nobody had a name for it, least of all him.
The diagnosis doesn’t excuse a thing. It explains it. The last part of the book is about what comes after the word: treatment, focus, and the daily work of keeping a mind like his pointed in the right direction.
“These weren't the cards I was dealt, these were the ones I chose.”
From the manuscript
“Shouldn't it be more like a finishing school as opposed to a place for finished people?”
From the manuscript
“They can lock the locks, but they can't stop the clocks.”
From the manuscript
The author
LukeJewitt
Founder, AI innovator, story consultant and actor. Since walking out in 2020 he has built and raised for ventures across beauty, crypto and AI, and worked on screen and behind the camera with writer and producer Nick Moorcroft.
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Essex, England© 2026 Luke Jewitt