‘90 people have taken their own lives already. How many more do they want?’ The Labour peer taking on the scandal of ‘99-year’ sentences
Tony Woodley is raging at the injustice of it all. Enough is enough, says the Labour peer who has introduced a private member’s bill to resentence prisoners still serving time under imprisonment for public protection (IPP), which was abolished 12 years ago because it was regarded as an affront to decency. Although the sentence was banned, it wasn’t done so retrospectively, which means that almost 3,000 IPP prisoners are still inside, mostly for minor crimes, not knowing when, or if, they will ever be released.
IPP is so horrific, Woodley says, that often people don’t believe him when he tells them about it. “If you said to somebody: ‘You’ve got 16 years in jail for stealing a plant pot’, they’d say: ‘You’re the bloody plant pot for saying that!’ People wouldn’t believe or didn’t want to believe some of the cases we’ve highlighted.”
The person who spent 16 years in jail for stealing the plant pot is Ronnie Sinclair, one of the people cited in the Guardian’s series, the IPP scandal, this year. We looked at other equally shocking cases in more detail. There was Tommy Nicol, given an IPP sentence after stealing a car. He killed himself in 2015 at the age of 37 (one of 90 IPP prisoners to take their own lives) after he was denied parole for the second time, despite having committed no further crime. Nicol’s sister, Donna Mooney, became one of the founding members of Ungripp, a campaign group that has highlighted the injustice of IPP.
Then there is Martin Myers, imprisoned for 18 years for attempting to steal a cigarette. Like many IPP prisoners, he was on a short tariff (19 months and 27 days) – the minimum amount of time he could serve in jail. Also like many IPP prisoners, he had been recalled to prison for breaching his licence rather than committing another crime. In Myers’ case, he was recalled for taking Valium without a prescription.
IPP sentences were introduced in 2005 by David (now Lord) Blunkett, when he was home secretary. The sentence was devised for people regarded as a danger to the public who had committed serious crimes short of murder that did not merit mandatory life sentences, and they were supposed to be used sparingly. The reality was very different. Judges resorted to IPP frequently, and applied the sentence to small-time repeat offenders rather than serious criminals who posed a threat. In total, 8,711 sentences were handed out and 6,000 people were serving them when IPP was abolished seven years later in 2012 after the European convention on human rights declared the use of IPPs “arbitrary and therefore unlawful”.
In 2020, the former supreme court justice Lord Brown in 2020 called IPPs “the greatest single stain on our criminal justice system”. Last year the prisons and probation ombudsman, Adrian Usher, said: “A prisoner’s IPP status should be considered as a potential risk factor for suicide and self-harm,” and the UN torture expert, Alice Jill Edwards, said IPP prisoners “are experiencing a punishment that is inhumane and often amounts to psychological torture”. David Blunkett, who has campaigned vociferously against the sentence he introduced, said that introducing IPP is “the biggest regret” of his political life.
IPP is also known as the “99-year sentence” because IPP prisoners can technically be kept in prison and on licence for that amount of time. In November, new legislation meant that IPP prisoners could apply to have their licence period terminated three years after being released rather than 10 years.
But this is not good enough for campaigners such as Woodley who says it’s a disgrace that there are any prisoners still serving such a barbaric sentence. Ninety eight per cent of IPP prisoners have served beyond their tariff. Ministry of Justice data released in October showed that 67 IPP prisoners have currently served more than 16 years in jail despite giving tariffs of 18 months or less.
Related: Martin Myers tried and failed to steal a cigarette. Why has he spent 18 years in prison for it?
For Woodley, resentencing is the only answer. What this means is that the 99% who have served beyond their tariff would have a plan for release, and those left would be sentenced appropriately for the crime they originally committed.
Woodley, a former head of the transport and workers union and founder member of the union Unite, is hoping to see Labour – which was reluctant to adopt resentencing while in opposition as it was seen as a political hot potato – change its attitude now in government. However, he is aware that the Government still fears negative headlines – in particular because prisoners are now being released early because of overcrowding in jails. In November justice minister Nicholas Dakin said the government rejects resentencing for IPP prisoners because “it would pose an unacceptable level of risk to members of the public, and, in particular, to victims”.
Woodley disagrees. “The government always says resentencing will just let them all out automatically immediately, but we’re not saying that. The bill is very clear. We’d have an expert committee that oversees it and they would make sure it’s done in a way that protects the public. You could prioritise those people who had the lowest tariff originally or the ones who are most over tariff.”
If the government has issues with any of his bill, Woodley says, he is open to suggestions. The one option he won’t consider is the status quo. “Doing nothing and leaving these people to rot in prison in what is really a life sentence is just unacceptable.”
He recently met with prisons minister James Timpson, who before he was in office said that he believed a third of Britain’s prisoners should definitely not be in jail and another third probably should not be. As the former chief executive of the Timpson shoe-repair and key-cutting business, James Timpson has gone out of his way to hire former prisoners. “If someone says to me ‘I’ve employed 30 ex-IPP people, and they were a credit to themselves and my business’, as he did, that will do me,” Woodley says. “I was very impressed by the man’s sincerity and his determination to make this disgraceful set of circumstances change.”
Will Timpson support his bill, though? “I don’t know,” Woodley says bluntly. “I wouldn’t want to snooker him.” While it was a brave decision for the prime minister to appoint a renowned reformer as prisons minister, disappointingly little has been heard from Timpson since then.
This is why it is vital that all votes on his bill are unwhipped, Woodley says. “The free vote is important like any conscience vote, and resentencing has cross-party support.” He pauses. “I’ll tell you what you don’t want. You don’t want your own party opposing you.”
Ungripp supports Woodley’s bill. Since the Guardian series on IPP, Ungripp has been awarded the Longfellow award for its work on prison reform – a deserved prize for a wonderful campaign. But it will be meaningless unless it sees a timeline for all IPP prisoners to be released – and soon. As for Martin Myers, he was recently released back into the community after his recall. He appears to be doing well, but if this bill does not receive royal assent, he knows he can be recalled to prison in the next three years for the smallest infringement of his licence conditions, and that terrifies him.
Meanwhile, Lord Woodley knows he has his work cut out. Only a tiny minority of private members’ bills (introduced by members of parliament who are not in the Cabinet) become law. But he’s on a mission. “I haven’t fought all my life against injustices to give up now. There’s too much at stake here.”
What will happen if his bill fails? “Well, we’ve had 90 people take their own lives already; how many more do they want?” He’s speaking faster and more urgently. “We’re doing it because of the disgraceful injustice that has been and is still taking place. How the hell, 12 years after IPP sentences were abolished, can we still see almost 3,000 people in prison with no hope? It can’t be right. I repeat myself,” he says exasperated. “How the hell?”
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
