You may remember back in April 2023 a prisoner staged a 12-hour protest on the roof of Strangeways prison about the injustice of IPP prisoners.  His name is Joe Outlaw, 37 years old and with 33 previous convictions. I was sent his story…

This is his story, in his own words

My story began in Bradford, Sunny West Yorkshire, and one of two children. The other being my sister Jill. At the start was a typical council estate life in the late 1980s. My Mom tried her best to bring us up as well as she could, but was cursed sadly by manic depression, what they now call bipolar. But this was not a fashion statement back then, it was dangerous and scary to witness. My Father was a gypsy from Hungary who never honoured his responsibilities as a father. Instead choosing to do a David Copperfield and disappear.

My sister was seven years older than me and would soon become my mum to be. By age three social services were involved and after one of my mom’s manic episodes, it was too dangerous for them to risk leaving us there. We were both placed on a full care order, which would cave the path years of painful memories I wish I could erase. Thankfully, they kept and Jill together in a wide range of foster parent, children’s homes and respite carers. Jill tried her best and I’m grateful for all the love she gave despite having to deal with her own sorrow as a young woman.

By the time she was 18 she had to leave me and that’s when I went off the rails. Constantly running away, and naively feeling more secure on the streets.

This stage of teenage growth embedded criminal dynamics to my survival and behaviour.

By fourteen social services basically gave up on me and I tell no lies when I say I was put in a B&B to live by myself, and no homes would take me. I was on a full care order until eighteen. Yet they lacked the support, guidance and interventions to raise me as expected. This happen twice, once in Shipley, West Yorkshire, and once in Wales at fifteen.

My criminality and reckless actions would continue for years.

I will say though, I was never a violent young offender. It was always nicking cars, motorbikes stealing etc. More a thief then a robber. I never sadly did manage to become rooted. I was always galivanting around the country, place to place. From twelve to nineteen life was an adventure, me a tent and a dog. Somehow, I always managed to pick up a stray for somewhere. I’ve always found animals and nature amazing. As a child I would find comfort and solace in beings alone in woods or on beaches. Just me and the pooch pondering life and all its confusions.

Well at age nineteen as destined, I get my first bit of proper jail.

Someone passed me an air rifle at a bus stop in the sticks in north Wales, and as he passed it to me, I generally shot him in the foot by mistake. I just grabbed the gun and the trigger was so sensitive, it popped and went off. I got three and a half years for that. But when I think back, I can barely remember it, it was just a life being in a children’s home, but I couldn’t run away and people were older, strange eh! Well to jump forward some years, by 23 I found love while I was travelling yet again. And for the first time in my life rooted in western-super-mare.

Despite being rooted my lifetime habits of survival were too deeply set.

To survive I sold weed, wheeling and dealing etc. and one night I was late in and my girlfriend at the time was arguing with me saying she was sick of me having my phone going off all the time, coming in late etc. She would take Valium on a night to sleep and said for me to take some and wind down, but I didn’t take any drugs like that back then. I had gone through all drug phases from young, except crack and heroin and by that time all I did was smoke weed. Well after some arguing, I just wanted to shut her up frankly, and I took three little blue tablets off her. Now little did I know that among the criminal knowledge, Valium are called Little Blue charge sheets, referring to their colour being blue, and the fact that people with criminal tendencies either wake up in cells, hence the charge sheet reference or they wake up surrounded by phones, money etc and not to have a clue how it all got there or what they had been up to obtain said items.

Needless to say, this inadvertently would be the little blue charge sheet that changed my life forever.

I do not remember a single thing of what I’m about to tell you and this is only what people have told me and information from statements etc. I took the tablets and drank some Southern Comfort, passed out, woke up and demanded more valium off my girlfriend. Once taken three more I then left the flat and went to a party. Where I stole a shotgun and shells, and then went into my local takeaway, where I went to every day by the way, and held it up at gunpoint. I left after being in this 60 seconds, and now rich with a grand sum of 200 pounds. Which by the way I would earn that in two hours selling weed etc. By the morning the police had come into my flat and arrested me. I woke up dazed and confused with a hangover from hell and realised I was in a police station. I had no idea how I had got there or why I was there. I got on the bell and ask them, and then I was told, I quote, you were brought in for armed robbery.  I had no need to do what I did that night.

I cannot tell you why or what I did it for because I’ve been asking myself that for many years now.

I’m just glad I never hurt anyone that night. I’m trying to write to the shopkeeper through probation to ask for his forgiveness and do what I can to apologise. Any trauma I might have caused that night. Sadly, by the time I realised I needed to do this. It was too late. I was given an 18-year sentence for that on a guilty plea. So, the judge would have given me around 25 years for that. It was a determinate sentence without my guilty credit taken off. However, I was to become an IPP prisoner, so the 18 years would be halved, and a tariff would be put on it. I did appeal and got this taken to a 4½ year sentence. So, all I would have to do is keep my head down, do some courses and take the rehabilitation offered. I’d be out in four and a half, right?

I was like a lamb to the slaughter. Little did I know then the world of hate, pain, violence, despair, I will be thrown into.

On reflection now, it’s actually quite hard for me to put into words how I got to the place I’m at now physically and mentally. It’s not isolated to one place of fault or blame, there is so many different factors that contribute to the IPP crisis that I see today. Also, everyone is different, some can endure more than others. But the one thing that I am certain of is that it is the repetition of trauma that is most damaging. Trauma is trauma, we go through it and depending on what level of trauma one endures it’s about being able to deal with that, having the time, help, support and space to do so and heal.

The problem with the IPP is that every single thing needed to go through the healing process is not accessible and furthermore, over time we go through it again and again until we become a product of the environment, we can’t escape.

This trauma then becomes torture and the strangest thing of all is the people who create or enforce this way of life then take no responsibility for doing so. When a broken man sits in front of them they blame the man for indeed breaking. 

Due to government cuts on prison staff, education, etc. wings are flooded with drugs, kilos coming in on drones on a nightly basis. An addict then comes to prison. But little does he know that he’s just swapping one drug house for another. And in this drug house, drugs are cheaper, and he hasn’t got to go shoplifting to get money to use. Then when he has a piss test, he is punished for using drugs. The prisoner estate covers everything up, they will portray that yeah, there is the problem, there always will be, but we’re working on it. When the truth is the whole system is burning with flame from hell, they have an obligation to provide criminals with drug free environments to progress, yet they will punish an addict for using drugs when it is the prison who has served it to them on a plate. It’s like telling an alcoholic not to drink but making him live and sleep in a bar. I’m sorry I’m digressing somewhat though. There is just so many systematic failures that contribute to the prison crisis that we live and see today.

As a normal prisoner, it is hard enough like I said at the start, but as an IPP is a soul-destroying environment to live in. Using a similar comparison as a drug addict, as IPPs we were told that under no circumstances can we get involved in violence. This is a big no no, yet the wings are some of the most violent places you have ever seen.

Do not let anyone fool you.

I have lived it and seen it for too long now. The things that I have witnessed are truly things of horror films. To be able to navigate yourself through this for years is so difficult. The social dynamics on wings is not the same as in the community. If faced with any confrontation, you only have three choices.

1. You submit and hope for the best, but now you are weak among your peers.

2. You stand your ground which can result in death or being slashed or stabbed. 

3.  Which is what the prison would expect you to do, go to staff and tell them. Now you’re a snitch and a target from everyone.

They are the only choice you have in an environment that is ever growing more violent and dangerous by the minute. I fear to see how things will be in years to come.

We as IPPs are put in impossible positions and as the years go by, the worse it gets.

And the more trauma we endure again and again. That in my opinion, is why so many IPPs now are suffering with PTSD, drug abuse, personality disorders, etc. The system has destroyed them and will continue to do so until people push for change.

There is only one resolution in my opinion, and that the Justice select committee had its spot on. Government needs to face facts and, on some level, admit what everyone else seems to know and that is that the system failed to rehabilitate them in the start, failed to rehabilitate during, and is failing to do so now 10 years after the abolition.

To the ones who remain that are sinking deeper and into hopelessness, freedom is indeed the only Saviour now.

I myself have luckily not let it beat me to the point of insanity or death, although some may disagree.

I decided to take a stand when it matters, when Dominic Raab knocked back the resentencing proposals.

Instead of letting it break me any further,

I commenced a roof top protest in Manchester that went viral on most social platforms.

 It was costly to my so-called progression, but it was a sacrifice I had to take.

For too long government have ignored or covered up the injustice of the IPP, so many agreeing with how wrong it was and how it should never have happened yet taking no action themselves to bring change. Cheap words is all.

Well, I took the choice to shine a light on it and not let them hide.

I did a 12-hour protest for not only myself and all those still on IPP, but for all them families of the 81 lost souls.

All them must be held accountable who contributed to the failures that led to them poor people taking them lives. Even if it is for 12 hours, the support and love that I have received since then, has been overwhelming, at times truly beautiful.

Well after that I was sent to HMP Frankland, where their intention to punish me for my activism was made clear by the foul things they did to me in that segregation. They refused to give me my special NHS diet that I had had for over four years due to my health, starved me, then one day while moving me cell, jumped on me and began assaulting me. I was stripped naked and placed in a box cell for hours on end. Right there and then, I decided, I was not going to take been treated this way. Days later I went out on the yard and managed to scale the wall. I then use a CCTV camera to break the cage roof and escape the seg, becoming the only man to ever escape a cat A segregation in the UK.

I then got my own back for the weeks of bully boy treatment and abuse by smashing the place to pieces. Then having a nice sunbathe in my boxers. This made the papers again, so now in eight weeks I’ve scaled 2 roofs and I’ve been in the press in countless papers. For this level of exposure,

I have now been sent to HMP Belmarsh unit segregation, where I stay totally isolated from everyone.

I get what I have done embarrass the prison state, but some would say it was a long time coming. I stand up for what I believe in and I know my values and principles. I should be proud of decency, respect, honesty, loyalty, humility, and dignity. It is the system that lacks in these principles, not me. In 13 years I have not once assaulted a member of staff yet I’ve been battered, stabbed, had my nose broken, lit split, teeth knocked out and that is just the physical abuse. Yet despite all this I shall keep my resolve.

My life now consists of exercise with four screws, a dog unit and I’m handcuffed and made to wear flip flops. Anyone would think I’m Bruce Lee. Some would say justified I’ll leave that up to you.

Since being here I’ve been subjected to over 170 full body strip searches in 14 weeks, sometimes four or more a day for three months. I was told all my visit rights had been stopped. Thankfully, they developed a change of heart and I now get visits. When will they let me back on the wings. I don’t know how long until I see a person’s face in this place that’s not a staff member, I also don’t know.

What I do know is that try as they might, my spirit will not be broken.

There is a movement out there that I am part of which gives me such strength and resolve. The other day I heard a man’s voice that I’ve never met being played to me down the phone by my girlfriend. This man spoke in a demo outside the prison about my story and all the IPPs, I love that, I felt through that voice I’ve never felt better. I was instantly elevated and overwhelmed. I used to feel lost, I used to feel lonely.

But now while I sit in the most lonely, isolated part of a prison system I am loved, I am supported, and I am strong.

But there are many, many more that sadly are not and for them I hope they find strength.

 Kindness and love always.

Joe outlaw