BLIND prisoner Yvonne Sleightholme does not have an anger problem and does not need to complete another anger management course.

Those are the conclusions of staff at Styal Prison in Cheshire, where Sleightholme - jailed in 1991 for the murder of a farmers' wife in Ryedale - remains locked up well beyond the ten-year sentence recommended by her trial judge.

The prison's verdict, revealed in documents seen by the Evening Press, clearly contradicts the Parole Board's view that she needs to address anger management issues before she can be considered for transfer to an open jail.

Campaigners battling for Sleightholme to be given such a transfer said today they will raise the prison's views when her case is reviewed later this year.

Margaret Leonard and David Hamilton said the documents were evidence that Sleightholme had made every effort to comply with the Board's requirements and also that it had made a mistake when it said that anger was an issue for her.

Sleightholme, who has consistently denied shooting dead a woman in a farmyard at Salton, near Malton, was refused a transfer by the board last autumn.

It said then that, without completed work on an Enhanced Thinking Skills course and Anger Management course, it felt she posed too great a risk of serious violence for release or transfer. The Evening Press subsequently discovered proof that she successfully completed a thinking skills course before the board reached its decision, and that she underwent an anger management course in 1998. The board then agreed to re-examine her case in the light of the paper's revelations.

The documents reveal that following an application to take part in an anger management course, Sleightholme was assessed for her suitability. She underwent a "hostility inventory" test used for assessing prisoners, measuring things such as resentment, indirect hostility, negativity, irritability, suspicion and verbal hostility, and produced a very low score.

The documents reveal that Sleightholme did not feel she had a problem with anger control, and could not recall the last time she lost her temper, but was willing to participate in the course, if necessary. There had been many situations in which she might have reacted in an angry or aggressive way during her time in prison, but she had not done so.

Updated: 09:20 Thursday, May 15, 2003