Maxine: police guard for life

Maxine Carr is to get police protection for life when she is released from jail next year.

Senior Whitehall officials are already working on plans to keep Ian Huntley's former lover safe when she gets out in May.

Carr, who lied to protect Huntley, was jailed for three and a half years for perverting the course of justice. She is in Holloway where she has been attacked by an inmate and labelled Myra Hindley mark II because children were involved in her offence. With no prospect of her returning to Soham or her home town of Grimsby, Home Secretary David Blunkett will be obliged to protect her from mob justice.

Carr will be taken to a secret address for the first days of her liberty. It is also possible she could be helped to resettle abroad or given cosmetic surgery to change her appearance, an option used in the past to protect IRA informers. The police will have a duty of care to Carr under Article Three of the Human Rights Act which protects individuals from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.

That means she cannot be let out of jail to cope alone when she is released automatically at the halfway point of her jail term.

Home Office, probation, police and prison officials will spend the coming months trying to work out a plan for her safety, knowing that the case presents unique challenges.

New identities, safe houses and police protection have been organised in recent times for James Bulger's killers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, and child killer Mary Bell.

But the critical difference is that their appearances changed in the years behind bars, while Carr is arguably one of the most recognisable and notorious women in Britain.

While it would theoretically be possible to change the way she looks, the most likely outcome is that Carr will be given 24-hour police protection.

Barrister Rambert de Mello, a human rights expert, said: "She's in the public limelight and one can imagine groups trying to get at her.

"It will be very difficult for her to take on a new identity, so I should imagine she will ask for a safe house.

"If they decide to end that protection she could take the case to court." Speaking when Thompson and Venables were released two years ago, Mr Blunkett called for calm and set the benchmark for the state's duty to protect even the most despised offenders.

He said: "We are not in the Mid-West in the mid-19th Century, we are in Britain in the 21st Century and we will deal with things effectively and we will deal with them in a civilised manner."

When she gets out of prison in May, Carr will have to submit to regular monitoring by the probation service until early 2006.

That means she would automatically have to tell them where she was living and would face a return to jail if there was any sense that her behaviour suggested she might offend. There is already speculation that she may be smuggled out of prison days before the end of her sentence to avoid public attention.