"There is no point pussyfooting … if we are not prepared to predict and intervene more early … pre-birth even … these kids a few years down the line are going to be a menace to society" - Tony Blair, August 2006
Listen to Trapped episode 3 here
In the early 1990s, both Labour and the Conservative party found a rare consensus around being seen to be “tough on crime.” The result was tougher sentencing and a 50% increase in the prison population between 1993 and 2012.
Remember ASBOs? In 2004, a report by the National Association of Probation Officers raised serious concerns that ASBO powers were being abused. "In many incidents, individuals are receiving a custodial sentence where the original offence was not itself imprisonable," it said. "ASBOs are being used against young people whose behaviour may be anti-social but not necessarily threatening. It is being used to deal with nuisance which could be dealt with in other ways."
It was from this ‘tough on crime’ environment that pervaded Britain from the early 1990s onwards, that Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences were born.
In this week's episode to understand where IPPs came from, I look into the history of the sentence, which came into existence in 2005 and the mechanics which made it such a failure. To get an understanding of the time, I speak to Lord Blunkett, Ken Clarke and a former supreme court judge amongst others.
I also visit the Parole Board HQ in Canary Wharf with campaigners, Hank Rossi and Shirley DeBono. Her son Shaun received an IPP sentence in 2005 for a street robbery of a mobile phone. He is one of the first people to receive an indeterminate IPP sentence and he’s been trapped in a cycle of recalls to prison ever since. We join Shirley as she travels to the HQ of the parole board in London to try and confront the CEO, Martin Jones, about delays to her son’s parole review. Shirley fears for Shaun's mental health: it’s a hopeless situation serving time with no release date in sight.
Episode 3: Tough on Crime
Here's a smart link to listen to (and share 🙏🏾 ) episode 3: https://podfollow.com/1689277181
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For more info about the Campaigns for Justice for IPPs prisoners go to: UNGRIPP www.ungripp.com/ Twitter @UNGRIPP and IPP Committee in Action