PAPERWORK: A PROPOSAL FOR FORGIVENESS

Each Saturday evening after ‘Bang Up’, Uncle Recall, an I.P.P* inmate residing in HMP Pentonville, astral projected into St. Chad’s Project Space to hold a seance with a past self.



A three week programme of shared recitals that included raps from HMYOI Feltham, autobiographical play readings and letters shared with Costi’s Mum, St. Bridget were shared in the project space.



By analysing restricted documents from yester-life Costi cleansed himself of wrong doings, addressed past traumas and critiqued government agencies.



Enactment and ritual provided the meeting place of para-possibilities, where timelines cross and alternate realities merge.



The ‘Coulda-beens’ and the ‘Shoulda-beens’ holding court in shared regret and resentment.

*In England and Wales, the imprisonment for public protection (IPP; Welsh: carcharu er mwyn diogelu'r cyhoedd)[1] sentence was a form of indeterminate sentence introduced by section 225 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (with effect from 2005) by the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, and abolished in 2012. It was intended to protect the public against criminals whose crimes were not serious enough to merit a normal life sentence but who were regarded as too dangerous to be released when the term of their original sentence had expired. It is composed of a punitive "tariff" intended to be proportionate to the gravity of the crime committed, and an indeterminate period which commences after the expiry of the tariff and lasts until the Parole Boardjudges the prisoner no longer poses a risk to the public and is fit to be released.[2] The equivalent for under-18s was called detention for public protection, introduced by s. 226 of the 2003 Act. The sentences came into effect on 4 April 2005.[3]

Although there is no limit to how long prisoners can be detained under IPPs, and some may never be released, they may be released on review; an IPP sentence is not a sentence of life imprisonment with a whole-life tariff.

In 2007, the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court ruled that the continued incarceration of prisoners serving IPPs after tariff expiry where the prisons lack the facilities and courses required to assess their suitability for release was unlawful,[4]causing concern that many dangerous offenders would be freed.[5] In 2010 a joint report by the chief inspectors of prisons and probation concluded that IPP sentences were unsustainable with UK prison overcrowding.[6] David Blunkett himself admitted in the House of Lords in 2021 that he had got it wrong