Me and IPP
IPPs, or Indeterminate sentences for Public Protection, were introduced in 2005. Though abolished in 2012, many of those already given an IPP before that date continue to suffer the consequences. Our scholar Gareth Evans reflects on his own IPP experience. A version of this blog featured in the May issue of Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners.
I received an IPP sentence of three-and-a half-years in November 2011. As with my first prison sentence, I had violently attacked two sex offenders. I was deemed a dangerous person and given an IPP.
Having served one sentence beforehand, I had heard of IPP, and knew it was a possible outcome. But I had no idea of the psychological stress such a sentence would impose on me. Don’t get me wrong, I had no illusion that my actions warranted a strong response. I surrendered to custody because I was aware that I couldn’t continue being angry and violent. I was finally in a position where I had to change. I had to, if I wanted to get out again.
In three-and-a-half years, I should have been able to argue my case at a Parole Board. But the system charged with administering this IPP sentence was broken. Through no fault of my own, my first parole hearing was five years after I was sentenced. Regardless of my behaviour in prison, I had to serve 18 months for no reason other than the strain of its administration.
‘I didn’t want to be this angry, violent man. I wanted help’
Instead, I was subjected to endless assessments. In every case, I was found not to be within their remit. I was too bad to be dealt with through the primary mental health services, and too lucid and well to be admitted as an inpatient. The IPP seemed to be an inevitable conclusion.
To survive – to retain some semblance of mental fortitude – you must be able to defend parts of your personality. So, what you show the small world you now inhabit is not all that you are. It isn’t an authentic account of the sort of person you can be. And the officers become the arbiters of your parole report. Every personality clash, every bad mood, becomes magnified into what’s taken as a comprehensive evaluation of who you are. Your prison record gets populated by incidents and causes for concern. Very few, if any, positive interactions are recorded for the same purpose.
My experience of it is by no means the most shocking. I wasn’t particularly hostile to the people holding the keys. Many of my peers, however, were. They had been stuck in this system for years and didn’t have the same outlook on its potential benefits to them as I did. Many were given impossible sentences. For example, Dave, sentenced to a seven-month IPP, was expected to show a Parole Board that he had committed to changing. I don’t know of any offending behaviour course which had less than a six-month waiting list. How was he expected to show anyone any change when the system simply did not allow him to do so?
Throughout the life cycle of IPP sentences, the UK government has incrementally acknowledged the strains that both the system and the prisoners subject to them have been under. They finally realised that the onus to prove a negative – that is to say, the burden of having to convince the panel that you were not going to reoffend – had to be removed. It would now be the burden of probation officers, psychologists and the like, to prove a significant risk that you would represent.
An attempt to clear the backlogue of IPP cases altogether
In regard to the shadow looming over everyone on IPP who had managed successfully to pass the Parole Board stage, the life licence has now been amended. It was then changed so that a person could apply for the licence to be removed after ten years of desistence. Further still, this was then amended to allow a person to get the supervision requirement terminated after, only, five years of being in the community with no further offending. The most recent reiteration, however, (enacted by the new Labour government) means that a person’s licence is automatically removed after only three years of impeccable, post-prison living.
I’ve been out of prison almost eight years now. I’ve had quite a lot of stuff to deal with. As I had promised on my Parole Board, I had attempted to reach out to my probation worker for support during these difficulties. However, they had absolutely no support to offer me. They couldn’t provide me with access to mental health services. They had no mechanisms available to me that made my situation any better. They were often obstructive and difficult. Yet, despite this, I have not reoffended. I’m not sure how I’ve managed to survive through these last few years. But I have.
In the absence of the support promised to me by probation, I reached out to the support network I had built up, independently of my relationship with the state.
With a little help from my friends
The most recent amendments to the licence came into effect in November 2024. When I asked my probation worker if I was eligible to have my licence ended, I was met with a glib remark: ‘Oh yeah, we probably could have done that a year or two ago.’ I was told that my next appointment would be the official sign-off. Just like that, after 20 years of continuous ‘supervision’- in one form or another. I was a free man.
It seems, then, that in spite of this gruelling legal situation I had been in, I am now able to move on. I get the sense the government has decided to pat itself on the back and claim they’ve solved the issues that IPP has created. But that could not be further from the truth. Faced with this moving of goalposts and insincere apologies, many of my peers have either taken their own lives or pushed back so hard against the system that they will probably never convince the Parole Board that they are safe to be released.
My friend, Dave, was amongst multiple people who had simply decided that the sentence was impossibly arduous to bear. He took his own life while on recall – one of those who simply decided that the sentence was impossibly arduous.
IPP continues to inflict pain, leaving people forever crushed under the weight of a state-sanctioned mistake that few are even aware of, and even fewer are prepared to label as an injustice.
UNGRIPP, the United Group for Reform of IPP, won our 2024 Longford Prize for their work to tackle the damage done by IPP sentences. Read the full prize citation about them here.