JEFFREY ARCHER escaped immediate punishment after pleading guilty yesterday to breaking prison rules by publishing a diary of his three weeks in a top-security jail.

Archer, 62, had his £12-a-day prison earnings stopped for 14 days and was banned from using the prison canteen for two weeks. The punishment was suspended for six months by the Governor of Lincoln jail, who presided over the hearing.

If Archer commits a further offence against prison rules in the next six months, the punishment will take effect.

Archer, serving four years for perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, has been told that if he publishes two planned further volumes of diaries while in jail he will be moved from an open to a closed jail for the rest of his sentence. Last night prison officers criticised the lenient punishment. Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, said: “This suspended punishment turns prison rules into a nonsense. It makes a mockery of the whole discipline system. Either because of his status or position the Prison Service does not want to recognise that what he has done is a serious breach of rules.”

Archer was called before Dick Peacock, the Governor of Lincoln Prison, within hours of the diary of his time in Belmarsh jail near Woolwich, southeast London, being published. Archer, a Category D (low-risk) prisoner, is expected to be transferred from Lincoln jail to an open prison within weeks. He will not return to North Sea Camp and will not be allowed to work in the community. Under current law he would be released automatically in 2004.

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