TRASHFUTUREPOD x MEDIA DIVERSIFIED: Life Sentences by Stealth: Nate Interviews Sam Asumadu about IPPs
TRASHFUTURE
SHOW NOTES In this special extra segment, Nate interviews Sam Asumadu from Media Diversified (@WritersOfColour) about the phenomenon of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs), a now-banned sentence that has resulted in thousands of British residents effectively receiving life sentences for acts as minor as stealing a mobile phone at age 17. Sam’s written an article on the topic for OpenDemocracy, excerpt below
Families’ plea over ‘barbaric’ indefinite prison sentences for minor crimes
Exclusive: Thousands left in English and Welsh prisons without release dates, despite controversial indefinite sentences long being scrapped
“Seventeen years I’ve been in jail, on a two-and-a-half year [minimum sentence], for a phone robbery where no violence was ever used.
“My daughter Lataya, 19 years old, has recently passed away, and my uncle now also. Please ask the media to run my story.”
Leroy Douglas wrote these words to campaigner Shirley Debono from his cell in Stocken Prison in the East Midlands. He does not know when he will be released.
Leroy was given a controversial type of indefinite prison sentence, known as ‘imprisonment for public protection’ (IPP), for stealing a phone during a street robbery in 2006. Some 8,000 IPPs were given out by judges in England and Wales between 2005 and 2012, when they were abolished.
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