2,600 forgotten prisoners left to rot indefinitely under 'inhumane' sentences outlawed 12 years ago

Donna Mooney struggles to talk about her brother, Tommy Nicol. He died nearly a decade ago, serving a sentence which the prime minister had declared “unclear, inconsistent and uncertain” nearly four years earlier.

“I’ve got letters from the time when Tommy refers to [his sentence] as psychological torture,” Mooney tells Big Issue. That, she now feels, “was the beginning of him calling for help.”

Her voice cracks as she remembers her brother who got sent to jail and never came out.

“He just didn’t see any way out, probably because he’d spent six years trying to do what he was told to do, to get on the courses that would have helped him, and he had no control or power to move that forward.

“It tipped him over the edge, to the point where he thought the only way out was to take his own life.”

Nicol was serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence after he stole a car from a garage and got into a tussle with the owner. At the time of his death, he had been in jail for six years. IPPs were established in 2005 for anyone who posed a “significant risk to members of the public of serious harm”, but fell short of crimes such as murder, and did not include a sentence length. Instead IPP prisoners are given ‘tariffs’ – the minimum time they must spend in jail before they are considered for release by a parole board. Nicol had a four-year tariff.

IPPs were meant to be handed out sparingly, with plans for around 900 people to serve an IPP at any one time. Instead, nearly 9,000 were handed out to people who had committed a range of crimes, including robbery and arson.

In 2012, David Cameron’s government outlawed IPPs, after a consultation into the sentence “raised significant concerns”. A year earlier, Cameron said his government had “inherited a system that is unclear, inconsistent and uncertain”.

Nicol died in prison nearly four years after Cameron’s speech, serving an IPP. A consultant forensic psychologist found that the IPP had contributed to his death “more than anything else” because it made him lose hope.

Though IPPs were banned, the ban did not extend to anyone already serving an IPP. Data released to Big Issue via the Freedom of Information Act shows 2,614 people were still serving IPPs in prison on 31 December 2024, 12 years after IPPs were outlawed.

For years, Mooney has campaigned against IPPs as a representative of the United Group for Reform of IPP (UNGRIPP).

Last August, Alice Edwards, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, called on the UK government to resentence those on the IPP “as a matter of priority”. She called the sentence “inhuman”, adding that, in many cases, it “amounts to psychological torture”. Big Issue has spoken to eight people who have been impacted by the IPP and echoed Edwards’ sentiments, while a forensic psychologist with expertise in IPPs warned the trauma of serving indefinite sentences risks compounding existing traumas and can led to a “much greater risk of suicide”.

Data suggests 10 times as many IPP prisoners have taken their own lives as other prisoners. All interviewees pointed to the indefinite nature of the sentence as a key cause for severe mental health deterioration among IPP prisoners. Some have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis and deep depression – which they blame on the IPP. Nearly all have attempted to take their own life in jail, some multiple times.

Concerns have also been raised over the crimes which were punished with an IPP. Data obtained via FOI shows that, of the 2,614 still in jail, more than one in five (595) are for robbery charges. More than 100 prisoners are also still serving IPP sentences for arson, theft or possession of weapons.

Prisoners on the IPP are also serving significantly inflated time in prison for crimes like arson, robbery and violence, in comparison to normal prisoners – without any prospect of release.

Read more:

• If we’re going to reform prisons, we should start with the prisoners
• ‘No two prisoners are the same’: 6 ways we can break the UK prison system’s cycle of failure
• An end to decades of government hypocrisy on prisons is in sight – if Labour can seize the chance

For instance, the average sentence for someone convicted of criminal damage or arson was 25.1 months in the year to September 2024, but the average time spent in jail by someone given an IPP for criminal damage or arson is 184 months – more than seven times as long.

For years, campaigners have called for all those on IPPs to be resentenced.

‘It’s not rehabilitation. It’s hellish’

“I just can’t understand how a boy of 20 – because it is a boy – can still be in prison at the age of 35, and for robbing a shop,” ‘Julie’ tells Big Issue.

Her son robbed a shop and pretended to have a weapon in 2009 and received an IPP with a nine-year tariff. He has not left jail since.

IPP prisoners like her son, jailed for robbery, have also served significantly inflated terms, the data suggests. On average, they have served 163 months in jail – more than six times longer than the average sentence in 2024 of 25.1 months.

He started self-harming when it became clear there was no guarantee he would ever be released. “He was suffering from an anxiety that he’d never experienced before in his life, I could hear his mental health deteriorating,” she says.

“It’s just a constant onwards battle.” He started courses necessary to get access to license, but he would be moved to other prisons which did not offer those courses any more, she says.

“He kept going up, then down, up, then down [mentally]. And in the end, he just gave up, he lost the will.”

It’s not that he does not know he did something wrong, she adds. He was homeless when he committed his crime, was smoking a lot of weed, and was brought up by a very young mother trying to make her own way in the world, struggling through a lot of childhood traumas herself.

“They talk about rehabilitation, it’s not rehabilitation. It’s hellish,” she says.

“He’s done his time, but they think he ‘might’ cause harm, so we’ll keep him in indefinitely. That’s not how it should be, that’s not justice.”

His story is not unique. ‘John’ spent nearly two decades serving an IPP, after he was convicted of imitating having a gun with an intent to cause violence. He was on a tariff of less than five years and is now out on licence.

During his sentence he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and describes being on large, high-security wards with schizophrenia as “hell-like”. Big Issue changed his name due to fears he could be recalled if he speaks openly to the media. In November, the government reduced licence limits to two years, meaning John’s licence could be cancelled two years after his release from jail, rather than 10 years as it was before.

“It was an endless sentence. I didn’t know when I was getting out, so I just gave up in prison,” John says. He stopped eating and isolated himself from everyone. He also attempted to take his own life.

‘Like hitting your head against a brick wall’

Dr Callum Ross, a consultant forensic psychologist based at high security psychiatric hospital Broadmoor, in Berkshire, says “it’s almost as if [these prisoners have] got something equivalent to a mental disorder by the virtue of their case being an IPP”.

Dr Ross has worked with IPP prisoners since he started at the hospital 18 years ago and wrote to the government’s IPP inquiry in 2022 as a representative of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

“One of the concerns I’d always had with mentally unwell IPP prisoners was the indefinite nature of their detention,” he says.

“It’s the guy who’s got a tariff of a year, doesn’t come to the attention of anybody in prison, doesn’t get into a hospital, and is just stuck – I think that’s an injustice.” he says.

Having the IPP, he says, is akin to “hitting your head against a brick wall”.

“You may well have this history of trauma, of flashbacks, and all the time you are being kept in an environment which can retrigger and retraumatise your early history.

“It’s no surprise that the suicide rate is so high,” he adds. Being left in a retraumatising environment like prison longer than you expected and not knowing when you might leave just would increase the risk, he says.

‘It’s like grieving for someone that is not dead’

‘Fiona’s’ son received an 18-month tariff 15 years ago, aged 20, after he stole a computer from his family to feed a drug habit and made threats against them in his police interview. He has stayed behind bars since.

She describes him as a “very vulnerable young man who always pleased others over himself”. Over his 15 years in jail, he “must have been to every category A and category B prison in England”. Some were so far away that it would have cost her around £500 to visit him, so she was not able to.

Now, “he is just a shadow of himself”, and has attempted to take his own life more than once. Seven years ago, Fiona moved to a new house hoping that her son would have somewhere to return to. But he has not seen the new house once.

“It’s like grieving for someone that is not dead,” she says.

Big Issue understands the government is not considering resentencing all or some IPP prisoners en masse. An MoJ spokesperson said it was right that IPP sentences were abolished in 2012, adding: “We are determined to make progress towards safe and sustainable releases for those in prison, but not in any way that undermines public protection.”

On 23 June, an IPP working group led by representatives of penal charity the Howard League suggested parole boards should publish a date within the next two years for IPP prisones’ release and the steps they need to take to get there. IPP prisoners making greater process during that time would be able to request earlier release, the working group recommended.

The recommendations also include a new offer of aftercare for those serving IPP sentences who have health or social care needs, equivalent to the duty provided under section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983. Big Issue understands the government is currently considering the recommendations.

Dr Ross agrees with the Howard League – but also thinks all IPP prisoners should be given similar aftercare, under separate legislation. All IPP prisoners should be given access to a qualifying process, he adds, to see which are in need of support once they leave prison.

“Wouldn’t it be really good if we could create that extra amount of support for the guys who don’t have a mental disorder, but who nevertheless are subject to this hugely increased risk of suicide?” he says. His concern is that, without it, IPP prisoners released after decades potentially in prison and exposed to a sentence which build trauma could struggle to reintegrate into society.

Mooney, whose brother, Tommy, took his own life in 2015 on an IPP, says her brother really lost hope after his second parole hearing knocked him back, and leaving prison seemed further away than ever.

She says all those on IPPs should be resentenced. But she adds: “If they’re not going to do that, then they need to figure out what they’re going to do to put an end to it.

“Because people on the IPP are still dying.”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more.