When Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) was introduced in 2005 by a “tough on crime” Labour government, it was expected the indeterminate sentence would be rarely handed out. But when the highly criticised scheme was abolished in 2012, 6,000 people were still serving their sentence – and 900 remain imprisoned today. IPP’s indefinite sentences have taken a devastating toll on the health of prisoners, including Taylor Atkinson, who was originally sentenced to less than four years, but ended his life after being held for more than 13.
“For everyone who knew and loved him, our lives without Taylor are that much smaller now. I miss him every day. Our queer family will forever miss him. We never got to spend even a day together outside of prison walls.” - Nicole Rose.
In December 2025, an inquest jury concluded the death in prison of Taylor Atkinson was due to suicide. Three years prior, on 9 July 2022, Taylor was discovered in his cell, having bled to death. Notably, the jury concluded that Taylor’s indefinite IPP prison sentence was the most significant factor contributing to his mental state and, subsequently, in his decision to end his own life.
Taylor was initially sentenced in 2010 under the UK’s controversial Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) scheme to three years and 265 days in prison for aggravated burglary. But he was detained indefinitely under a technicality that permits the continuation of a sentence if the parole board believes an inmate is still considered dangerous or highly likely to commit another offence.
Taylor’s pattern of self-harm, initiated by childhood abuse, worsened in frequency and severity, and was exacerbated by the conditions of prison as well as the lack of a foreseeable end date to his detainment. Together, these factors created a deadly downward spiral.
At the time of Taylor’s death, he had been held in prison for more than 13 years - a decade longer than his initial sentencing.
Though the contested IPP scheme was abandoned by the UK government in 2012, hundreds remain incarcerated without a release date. Additionally, since it was first implemented in 2005, hundreds of IPP prisoners have died in prison, with many ending their own lives.
Family members of those serving IPP sentences, campaign groups and solidarity organisations continue to mount pressure on the UK government to reform a failing system that prioritises unjust and oppressive punishment rather than striving for transformative rehabilitation.
The vision of how this transition can be achieved varies amongst lobbyists and activists, but all believe that the fate of prisoners depends on systemic change.
Taylor’s prolonged anguish cannot be undone by the findings of his inquest, but his loved ones hope his experience could act as a catalyst to spark the long overdue abolition of IPP.
IPP: My “biggest regret”
The IPP scheme was devised in England and Wales as part of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Introduced in 2005 by the Home Secretary David Blunkett, it was part of the Labour government’s broader strategy to act “tough on crime”.
This new form of sentencing was aimed at those whose crimes did not warrant a life sentence, but who were judged too significant a risk to be released when the term of their sentence had expired. Instead, after serving a “minimum tariff sentence” (the minimum time issued in an initial sentence), a parole board would determine whether a prisoner no longer poses a threat to the public and is fit to be released.
Failing this, an inmate would be given an additional tariff until another parole board judgement at a later stage. This process meant that prisoners could be detained indefinitely based on the discretion of a parole board.
Of the ‘unreleased’ IPP prisoners who have served their minimum tariff period, 75% have been held for 10 years or more longer than their tariff.
Prisoners who were released would be on license with conditions and, if these were breached, they would be recalled to prison, with some being frequently recalled for trivial and bureaucratic breaches of licence conditions rather than for committing a crime. These licenses would only be terminated following the decision of the parole board.
While this “tough on crime” scheme may have been appealing to some in the political realm and some members of the public, it would soon prove disastrous.
When introduced in 2005, it was expected that IPP sentences would be rarely handed out, with predictions that around 900 people would be serving them at any given time. But judges gave out 8,711 IPP sentences, and when IPP was abolished in 2012, 6,000 people were still serving the indefinite sentence.
In 2007, the UK High Court ruled that the continued incarceration of prisoners without the facilities and courses required to assess their suitability for release was “arbitrary, unreasonable and unlawful”.
The following year, reforms were initiated under the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, giving judges a new threshold based on the severity of a crime to ensure IPP sentences were used more sparingly. But this reform came too late for many already sentenced.
A report published by the chief inspectors of prisons and probation in 2010 concluded that IPP sentences were “unsustainable” for the UK’s overcrowded prison system. These concerns were echoed in Parliament, with Conservative MP Crispin Blunt declaring that prison overcrowding and subsequent failing rehabilitation services were “not a defensible position.” The pressure for reform was mounting.
Weeks later, during a press conference on sentencing reforms held under a new Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government, UK Prime Minister David Cameron described IPP as “unclear, inconsistent and uncertain”. Within the same breath, he stated plans to replace it with “an alternative system that is clear, tough and better understood by the public.”
A year later, a landmark 2012 European Court of Human Rights case concluded that the UK failed to provide sufficient rehabilitation for IPP prisoners, rendering their continued detention arbitrary and therefore violating the European Convention on Human Rights.
That same year, the sentencing scheme was abolished. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 was implemented as a new system, which included extended sentencing to manage dangerous offenders, mandatory life sentences for re-offending serious violent and sexual crimes and a “two-strike” policy for re-offenders.
But this abolition was not retrospective. So, the 8,711 IPP sentences that had already been imposed by courts continued.
A decade after this abolition, Ministry of Justice figures showed that as of the end of 2021, 1,602 people remained imprisoned. A further 1,360 people were in prison having been released and then recalled often for breaches of licence such as missing appointments with probation officers or losing their place at approved premises, rather than for committing a crime.
Around the same time, the Justice Committee held an IPP inquiry and received a joint submission from 50 psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists, stating: “we are gravely concerned about the psychological impact of the IPP sentence, and our profession’s involvement in it”.
Notably, the subsequent report states: “Suicidal thinking and suicide attempts featured frequently in the testimonies of those serving the IPP sentence in prison, with many citing the sentence itself as a major contributory factor.”
Commenting on a case of a prisoner who was driven to psychosis after being jailed for more than a decade for stealing a mobile phone, Dr Alice Jill Edwards, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, said in 2023 that the case was “emblematic of the psychological harm caused by the IPP sentences”, and the resulting “distress, depression and anxiety are severe for prisoners and their families.”
Even David Blunkett, the former Home Security who orchestrated the IPP scheme, admitted it was a failure and was his “biggest regret” during his time in government.
Today, the situation continues to be bleak. Between 2006-2024, records show 90 self-inflicted deaths in custody among individuals serving an IPP sentence. And in 2024 alone, there were 1,576 incidents of self-harm among those serving IPP sentences, according to Ministry of Justice data.
At the end of 2025, there were 924 unreleased IPP prisoners, plus 1,464 “recalled” IPP prisoners (previously released but returned).
Each of these figures represents a real person, with many stories going unheard. Or being heard too late.
Taylor Atkinson’s story
Taylor’s trauma began early.
After surviving childhood abuse, Taylor, as a teenager, understood himself as a man. He asked his doctor for gender-affirming hormones and surgery, but was denied.
Taylor turned to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. With no financial means, he burgled a neighbour to fund his dependency. Full of remorse, he pleaded guilty and was given an IPP sentence in 2010.
For Taylor, incarceration was not only traumatic but also triggering, reigniting the memories of his abuse as a child. He turned to self-harm.
With every year that passed, the self-harm escalated, both in frequency and severity, and was further exacerbated by the death of Taylor’s maternal grandparents who had adopted him. He couldn’t imagine life without them, making the prospect of release frightening.
After serving his initial sentence, Taylor was denied release. In the eyes of the parole board, he had not completed enough risk reduction work through compulsory programmes and continued to self-harm.
After an additional year in prison, his self-harm intensified, and he had to be hospitalised. His occasional hope for release would always revert to deep despair.
In his eighth year inside prison – double his initial sentence – Taylor took an overdose and went into a coma. Surviving this, he took another overdose and fell into a second coma. He was relocated to another prison and continued to make frequent suicide attempts.
Throughout Taylor’s time in prison, he told his loved ones he repeatedly suffered transphobia and homophobia. And COVID-19 lockdown restrictions made the isolation even more unbearable.
After the pandemic came a glimmer of hope. Now eight years beyond his tariff sentence, Taylor was granted a taste of freedom through a day release scheme to assist rehabilitation and reintegration prior to release.
It was a chance to prove to the parole board that he was safe. But after several day-releases, an incident beyond his control set him back. While on day release, Taylor lost his supervising officer and had no means of contact.
A report by the charity Inquest, which specialises in investigating deaths in custody, states: “The jury heard than an inexperienced officer and an ambiguous licence condition contributed to a misunderstanding whereby they lost each other. On return to the prison a senior officer, again unfamiliar with the details of Taylor’s case and what had happened, told Taylor he had to move, immediately, off Res 7 [allowing the day-release programme], taking him off his path to release, whilst the matter was investigated. The jury found that the decision was ‘hasty, poorly communicated and made without due consideration of all the facts.’”
In fact, an investigation into this incident never happened. The prison failed to lay the charges in time so it couldn’t be investigated through the adjudications process. Despite the lack of investigation, Taylor was treated as having failed.
After this, Taylor made another attempt to take his own life but was found and saved just in time. The next time, however, he was discovered dead in his cell.
Throughout his incarceration, he stated on multiple occasions that his only way out of prison would be “in a body bag”. After 14 years, that theory was proven true. Now, his loved ones want people to know it was preventable.
“He wanted his story to be known”
Nicole Rose first met Taylor at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey while serving a sentence for an animal liberation campaign from 2009 to 2010. She worked in the prison gardens and met Samantha Faulder, who Taylor had formed a relationship with, and also worked as a listener, a Samaritans scheme which provides confidential emotional support to prevent self-harm and suicide.
Photograph of Nicole and Taylor together
But it was after Nicole’s release that she became close with Taylor. Samantha asked Nicole if she would write to Taylor as he had little support inside prison. Over the weeks, months and years ahead, their friendship grew, each becoming a significant part of the other’s life. She visited him frequently, more often when he was distressed.
And she later played a vital role in Taylor’s inquest.
“He wanted his story to be known,” she said, “he wanted the prison to be held to account [and] he wanted people to know about the IPP sentence.”
Nicole had little faith the inquest could deliver any form of justice, and she is clear that “no amount of policy recommendations will counter the harm and trauma built into the prison by design”.
Testament to this, the inquest took place approximately two and a half years after Taylor’s death. For Nicole, it was a long time to wait for any kind of closure.
And as a result, witnesses failed to recall specific details and events. During the inquest, prison officers said they simply did not remember.
“It was emotionally exhausting to navigate the grief, anger and rage constantly surfacing as a response to the evidence,” Nicole said.
The jury concluded that Taylor’s IPP sentence was likely the most significant factor contributing to the feelings of despair and mental exhaustion that led to his actions on the day he died. They found that matters were made worse by the incident relating to day release, Taylors removal from open conditions, and the prison’s suicide and self-harm management which failed to reduce his risk of self-harm.
Nicole described the feeling as “a blow to the stomach” and saw it as an example of how violence in the prison system is so normalised that no lessons can be learnt from its failings.
Though not entirely surprising, she said it was both shocking and upsetting for her, especially as there had been other deaths at HMP Eastwood Park around the same time.
The IPP scheme reaffirms Nicole’s belief in prison abolition as part of wider intersectional struggles. She said: “Prisons will never be solutions to social and economic problems caused by an inherently unequal and unjust society.”
The call for prison reform
For Nicole, prison “warehouses” people who have grown up in poverty, are survivors of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, and who often have active addiction challenges. These are health-specific issues and demand care, compassion and structural change.
Without this, Nicole believes there is no prospect of meaningful change and prison will simply “perpetuate trauma and poverty.”
Still, Nicole remains hopeful that individual and collective action can make a difference to people’s lives in real time. And though her optimism for a meaningful outcome of the inquest remained low, she is adamant of the importance of prisoner solidarity.
She said: “Prisoners are so dehumanised in society that people fail to advocate for the human beings behind the walls.”
Nicole continues to maintain a line of support through her mutual aid collective Solidarity Apothecary, including letter writing, pressure campaigns for specific prisoners and post-prison care.
She is not alone. Formed in 2020, UNGRIPP is a mutual aid group run by individuals directly affected by IPP sentencing. They describe themselves as a grassroots movement led by families and survivors of the IPP sentence, saying “Our work is forged in lived experience, centring the voices of those directly impacted to ensure that the human cost…remains the focus of the campaign.”
UNGRIPP aims to bridge the gap between academic research and political lobbying, using raw testimony as a key driver for legislative reform. Their motivation is simple: “to stop people from taking their own life because of what the sentence has done to them.” Working with other campaigners, they helped secure a reduction in the licence termination period (the waiting time for a parole review) from 10 to 3 years.
This success came in part from the coordinated evidence they had submitted as part of the Justice Select Committee Inquiry in 2022, which concluded that IPP sentencing was “irredeemably flawed”. They also compiled a multi-media project, Forgotten but not gone, using poetry, photography and art to humanise the statistics and displayed this as an exhibition within Parliament to bring “the lived reality of the IPP crisis directly to the policymakers with the power to end it.”
UNGRIPP considers the reduction in waiting time a “landmark breakthrough”, but they don’t underestimate the challenges that lie ahead, determined to advocate for proportionate justice and therapeutic support.
They want every ongoing IPP prisoner to be given a new fixed-term sentence that is proportionate to their original crime, providing a clear “light at the end of the tunnel”.
Those struggling with complex trauma or mental health issues should be transferred to high-support therapeutic environments rather than standard high-security prison wings. And UNGRIPP is also calling for a robust, well-funded community support system, rather than the threat of indefinite recall.
These strategies may appear unrealistic to some, but prison reform is becoming an increasingly hot topic, with many recognising the need for change.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “It is right that IPP sentences were abolished, and we provide additional support to prisoners serving them – including improved mental health services. We are determined to make progress towards safe and sustainable releases for those in prison, but not in a way that undermines public protection.
“We have made significant progress in supporting IPP offenders, including record releases of recalled prisoners and reductions in the IPP population in the community.
“Forthcoming Mental Health Act reforms will speed up access to specialist inpatient care and introduce a 28-day statutory time limit for prison-to-hospital transfers.
“The reforms will also end the use of prison as a place of safety for those assessed as needing hospital treatment.”
Described as “revolutionary” in a press release, the impact of this remains to be seen. But these reforms will not address the direct conditions that are so detrimental to the mental and physical wellbeing of prisoners, described as “dire” in last year’s detailed Justice Committee report.
It is too late for Taylor Atkinson and the more than 90 individuals who took their own lives since 2005. And the fate of the remaining 2,388 IPP prisoners remains uncertain. While some constructive steps have been taken, the pace is painfully slow.
Reflective, Nicole recalls Taylor’s true nature. “He was a huge softie”.
Photograph of Taylor Atkinson
Often misjudged by his appearance and people’s prejudice, ultimately, he just wanted to be free and live peacefully with some rescue dogs by the sea.
If you are feeling low, Samaritans are here – day or night, 365 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.
Editing by Lacuna editorial board.
