Shaun presently lives near London, and talks to audiences of young people across the UK and Europe about his experiences and the consequences of getting involved in drugs and crime. In July 2008, he won a Koestler award for a short story, which he read to an audience at the Royal Festival Hall. He keeps Jon's Jail Journal going by posting stories mailed to him by his prison friends. Shaun was released in December 2007, and continues to campaign against Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He credits books for being the lifeblood of his rehabilitation. By studying original texts in psychology and philosophy, he sought to better understand himself and his past behaviour. While incarcerated, he submerged himself in literature - reading over 1000 books, including many classics. Shaun had only read finance books prior to his arrest. He was sentenced to 9½ years, and served almost 6. After two years of being held on remand, Shaun was convicted of drug offences. His aunt smuggled his writing out of the jail, and his blog, Jon's Jail Journal, turned the international media spotlight on the conditions.įacing a life sentence, Shaun entered a lengthy legal battle. Shaun documented the conditions using a golf pencil sharpened on the door: dead rats in the food, the techniques he used to sleep with cockroaches crawling on him, gang mayhem and violence. He ended up in the jail with the highest rate of death in America, where not only gang members but even guards were murdering prisoners. On May 16th 2002, a SWAT team knocked his door down. Years later in the Arizona desert, Shaun became submerged in a criminal underworld, throwing parties for thousands of ravers and running an Ecstasy ring in competition with the Mafia mass murderer Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano. But he was leading a double life.Īfter taking his first Ecstasy pill at a rave in Manchester as a shy student, Shaun became intoxicated by the party lifestyle that would change his fortune. Within a decade, he became a stock-market millionaire. Shaun arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, a penniless business graduate from a small industrial town in England. Shaun’s writing – smuggled out of the jail with the highest death rate in America run by Sheriff Joe Arpaio – attracted international media attention to the human rights violations: murders by guards and gang members, dead rats in the food, cockroach infestations… His story was featured worldwide on National Geographic Channel as an episode of Locked Up/Banged Up Abroad called Raving Arizona. Shaun Attwood is a former stock-market millionaire and Ecstasy trafficker turned YouTuber, public speaker, author and activist, who is banned from America for life. Shaun Attwood was the Walter White of the Ecstasy market in Arizona' - DJ Keoki 'If you like Breaking Bad, you will love Shaun's trilogy. 'Shaun's trilogy is the Manchester rave scene meets The Wolf of Wall Street and ends in The Shawshank Redemption' - Jon Ronson author of The Psychopath Test

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