My brother is one of Britain’s most wronged prisoners – he’d rather die than be in jail! B
An RAF veteran whose brother is languishing behind bars under an indefinite prison term that has seen at least 90 inmates end their lives says it is ‘extremely urgent’ he is resentenced and released.
Rob Russell was handed an IPP (Imprisonment for Public Protection) sentence with a two and a half year minimum tariff in 2009 for making a threat to kill.
He is still in prison today having served six times the length of his original tariff – and five years more than the maximum determinate sentence available for the offence.
The IPP sentence was scrapped in 2012 amid growing concern over the psychological impact on prisoners. But the abolition was not retrospective, leaving nearly 3,000 inmates trapped in the system with no end in sight.
Some 700 of those are 10 or more years past their original term.
They include Wayne Bell, who was jailed at the age of 17 for an assault while attempting to steal a bike and has now spent 17 years behind bars, Aaron Graham, who was given an IPP in 2005 for a GBH charge and will have spent 19 years in prison in December this year, as well as Rob.
Speaking to Metro, Rob’s brother Roddy Russell said the sentence has had such a devastating effect on his younger sibling’s mental health that he has tried to end his life ‘on at least two occasions’ and once ‘asked another prisoner to throttle him’.
‘Get on and do your two and a half years and you’ll come out’
Over the past 15 years, Roddy has become his brother’s case worker, campaigning tirelessly for his brother’s release so he can return to the Forest of Dean, where they both grew up.
The West Country region was where Roddy embarked on his dream career in the Royal Air Force, but also where Rob’s nightmare began.
At the time of his arrest, Rob had become alcohol dependant following the breakdown of his marriage and had also lost his job.
‘I knew nothing about the criminal justice system at all because we had never come into contact with it,’ Roddy said.
‘I thought at that time that “OK, you’ve messed up” and I trusted the criminal justice system to deliver justice.
‘So I just let the system get on and do what I thought the system would do and deliver justice. I thought, get on and do your two and a half years and you’ll come out.’
Rob ‘was doing anything and everything the prison could possibly offer him by way of rehabilitation’, Roddy says, but his removal from a behaviour course for being ‘disruptive’ proved a huge stumbling block.
‘All happened around his two and a half year point so of course Parole Board didn’t give direction for him to be released,’ Roddy said.
‘It was around about that point that he appeared to give up completely with trying, because he had been trying so hard and the two and a half year point had just passed him by.
‘I didn’t recognise my own brother’
‘That was also the point where I kind of thought there’s something a bit strange going here [with the sentence]. Then he just declined.
‘He became withdrawn, wasn’t taking care of his own personal health and he ended up trying to commit suicide on at least two occasions. He asked another prisoner to throttle him.
‘He then just went into this completely disengaged catatonic state.’
The prison eventually contacted Roddy inviting him to come and visit his brother because staff were so worried.
‘That was my first time in a prison,’ he recalls. ‘I looked around the visitors’ hall and I couldn’t see anyone that looked like my brother.
‘I said, “Sorry, I can’t see him”, so they pointed him out to me. I went over to the desk and he looked so dishevelled.
‘He’d lost weight. His hair was all matted and greasy and unkempt. He’d grown a beard with horrible bits and pieces in it.
‘He was agitated, his eyes were darting all over the place. He wouldn’t give me eye contact. He couldn’t speak to me properly.
‘He looked like the pictures you see in the Bible of Jesus nailed to the cross.
‘I found that quite distressing. I didn’t recognise my own brother.’
‘This is what that IPP sentence has done to him’
The subsequent years have followed a pattern of prison adjudication hearings addressing alleged rule breaks, failed Parole Board hearings and deepening mental health problems.
‘When he got to around about the 10-year mark he would speak about murderers, rapists and paedophiles having come into prison after him and they’ve got out while he’s still in prison,’ Roddy said.
‘He’s at the stage now where he won’t even engage with parole – he just doesn’t turn up for the parole hearings.
‘When I visited him recently, he came up to the visitors’ hall and he brought like a little A5 pamphlet of religious prayers. And this is really worrying for me now because he’s moved on to another stage of mental health impairment that needs assessment and diagnosis and treatment.
‘He now believes that he is a follower of Jesus and he has to stay at HMP Swaleside because God has placed him there to shine a light on the darkness that there is there.
‘[He believes] he has to shine this light on the darkness to expose all of the wrongdoers at HMP Swaleside and have them held to account for their wrongdoing.
‘He was never like that before he went into prison. This is what that IPP sentence has done to him.’
At least 90 IPP prisoners have ended their lives
Roddy went on: ‘I think a lot of IPP prisoners are like Rob and they’re doing this to try and make sense of the ridiculous amount of time they’ve been incarcerated because it doesn’t make sense to them.
‘The judge gives you a two and a half year tariff so therefore really at or shortly after the two and a half year tariff I should be released.
‘So, the ones who have never ever been released 10, 15 years down the line must be trying to make some sort of sense of how they’ve ended up in prison for so long.’
According to recent government data, 90 IPP prisoners have taken their own lives in prison since 2005.
Last year alone, there were nine self-inflicted deaths of IPP prisoners – the highest number in a single year since the sentence was introduced, according to the prison and Probation Ombudsman (PPO).
Professor Graham Towl, former chief psychologist at the Ministry of Justice and professor of forensic psychology at Durham University, told Metro prisoners serving indefinite sentences have a greater risk of ending their lives.
‘The patterns of the timings of such deaths can be different to determinate sentenced prisoners where the period of the very highest levels of risk are in the early days of imprisonment,’ he said.
‘With indeterminate sentenced prisoners the periods of inflated risk of death by suicide appear to be associated with around the times of their periodic case reviews.
‘The IPP sentence is widely discredited – it seems to me to be an example of an unjust sentence.’
‘It’s a problem created by politicians – they have to come up with a solution’
That view is shared by Lord Blunkett, the man who first introduced the sentence while serving as home secretary in the New Labour government in 2005.
He has called the IPP sentence his ‘biggest regret’ and is now backing a Private Member’s Bill introduced in the House of Lords earlier this month aimed at providing a framework for the resentencing of individuals still serving them.
The issue is all the more pressing as the government activates emergency measures to release hundreds of inmates to free up spaces after the prison population hit a record high.
‘It’s almost like it’s a sick dark joke,’ Roddy said of the temporary early release scheme. ‘I would laugh at it if it wasn’t so serious and it wasn’t affecting me in the way it’s affecting me.’
According to experts, a resentencing campaign could cut prison overcrowding by a third and free up the equivalent of the population of four average-sized UK prisons.
Richard Garside, the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said: ‘Even if the government sorts out the short-term prison capacity, they still face further capacity pressures in the coming few years.
‘Resentencing all those subject to the IPP sentence will go some way to heading off the medium-term prison capacity crisis that is headed the government’s way.
‘Labour, not unreasonably, argues that the immediate, short-term capacity crisis is a legacy of the outgoing Conservative government. But now Labour is in government, it is time to act.
‘If Labour continues to reject measures like the resentencing of those serving an IPP sentence, and other creative solutions to the medium-term capacity crisis coming down the road, the resulting mess will be on it alone.’
Roddy went on: ‘When I speak to MPs they all agree something needs to be done about it but none of them are getting on and doing anything about it.
‘It’s a problem that was created by politicians and politicians have come up with a solution.
‘There was a cross-party resolution – the resentencing – but that seems to rest with the justice secretary as an individual.
‘It is extremely urgent that they get on and do the resentencing because they’ve got blood on their hands already with these deaths – over 90 deaths by suicide in prison.
‘And we’ve found at least 10 deaths outside by people on licence who can’t cope anymore with the IPP sentence hanging over them and the threat of recall.’
Speaking in July after the government announced plans to reduce the IPP licence period from10 years to three, Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said: ‘I want to make progress towards a safe and sustainable release for those serving the IPP sentence, but not in a way that impacts public protection.
‘Commencing these measures is the first step in doing so.
‘I will continue to monitor progress in this area, and the government plans to consult expert organisations to ensure the right course of action is taken to support those serving IPP sentences.’
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: ‘We are determined to make progress towards the safe and sustainable release of those still serving IPP sentences – which were rightfully abolished – while continuing to prioritise public protection.
‘The Prison Service provides additional support to those still in custody, including improving access to rehabilitation programmes and mental health support.’
