UK - in jail for 99 years

[MerryMadigralMadge]

A long read, but worth your time

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/24/tommy-nicol-kind-friendly-beloved-brother-died-prison-99-year-sentence

I just read this article, about prisoners in the UK, on a particular type of sentence, an imprisonment for public protection (IPP), where repeat offenders were given this alternative sentence. 

Some stats:

• implemented in 2005, abolished in 2012 after it was determined to be a gross breach of human rights, a "stain on the criminal justice system", but not abolished retrospectively. 
• There are still nearly 3,000 prisoners still serving under IPP. 
• Originally projected to affect up to 900 people, it ended up affecting 6000
• Prisoners under IPP are 2.5 times more likely to kill themselves
• 57% of prisoners are determined to have English and math skills of an 11 year old, yet getting out of prison for IPP prisoners is dependent on completing course work, not being on any MH medication, not having MH issues etc. 

"....There are still 2,852 people in prison serving IPP sentences. Many of them now have severe mental health problems and have lost hope because they don’t know when, or if, they will be released. In the 19 years since IPP was introduced, 90 prisoners serving the sentence are known to have killed themselves. A 2020 study by the Prison Reform Trust found that IPP prisoners were two and a half times more likely to harm themselves than others in the prison population.

....

In 2022, nine prisoners serving IPP sentences killed themselves – the highest number of self-inflicted deaths by prisoners since the sentence was introduced. Last year, the prisons and probation ombudsman, Adrian Usher, published a bulletin that said: “A prisoner’s IPP status should be considered as a potential risk factor for suicide and self-harm.” Usher revealed that of the 19 self-inflicted IPP deaths reviewed for the bulletin, only five of the individuals had been placed on an ACCT.

In August 2023, Alice Jill Edwards, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, wrote to the government asking how the IPP sentencing system is compatible with its “human rights obligations and, in particular, the absolute prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment”. Like Mooney, she has called for the resentencing of IPP prisoners: “IPP sentences were abandoned more than a decade ago. There can be no justification for the continued indefinite detention of so many individuals, often for relatively minor crimes.”

In March, the House of Lords voted through a series of amendments to the victims and prisoners bill that would help IPP prisoners, but resentencing was not backed by either Conservative or Labour. “There are no votes in releasing people from prison,” Mooney says.

I ask Mooney whether her work with Ungripp is helping her or making life harder. “I retraumatise myself every time I talk about Tommy. I think about a time when I’ll not be doing it any more and I can just grieve for my brother.” I hear her talking on the phone to one man who has been in prison for 18 years for attempting to steal a cigarette. He seems to have lost hope, just as Nicol did, and now has terrible mental health problems. He is one of four IPP prisoners who calls her a number of times a week. If you didn’t know better, you would think she was talking to her brother."

[MerryMadigralMadge]

such a warning against governments making sentencing laws or changes, as a knee-jerk reaction, or as a vote seeking "tough on crime" campaign. 

"She thinks about the life Nicol could have led. “That’s what makes me so angry. The education system, the prison system; it’s all geared towards damaging the most damaged.”

Her brother never received support, she says. “We’d have the conversation all the time. He’d say: ‘I want to come out, get a job, have a family,’ but he didn’t know how to get there. He’d come out, get overwhelmed, make really bad decisions and do stupid things.” Just think, Mooney says, if the money spent on incarcerating her brother had been used for therapy, to prepare him for the outside world and to support him once he was free."

Edited April 24 by MerryMadigralMadge

[Iamferalz]

Wow, I never heard of that type of sentencing.  

Those prisoners must be institutionalised by now and it’s appalling how so many have learning disabilities too.

[little lion]

Thanks, it was an insightful article. Sad situation but I’m glad I read it.