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Strangeways protestor daubs 'FREE IPPZ' on the roof - what the sentence means and why it's so controversial

An inmate mounting a protest at Strangeways prison has daubed 'FREE IPPZ' across the roof of the jail, in an apparent dig at a now abolished court sanction titled Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences (IPP).

The prisoner has also been heard repeatedly shouting 'free IPPs'.

So what are IPPs, why were they scrapped and why does it remain an issue today?

READ MORE: LIVE: Prisoner spotted on roof of Strangeways prison - latest updates

In 2005, the then Home Secretary David Blunkett introduced Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences (IPP). The public, press and even some judges - confronted with this new tool - struggled to understand them at first.

Those who got them were handed minimum terms, often only of a few years, after which they had to convince the Parole Board they were safe to be released.

If they weren't deemed safe, they remained behind bars.

The problem was IPP prisoners weren't given access to courses so they could prove they were rehabilitated.

So they lost hope and many of them kicked off behind bars.

Your average prisoner serves half their sentence. But an IPP prisoner who was sentenced for a relatively minor crime could be forced to remain behind bars far longer than many killers, rapists, major drug dealers, paedophiles and organised criminals.

In 2012 IPPs were abolished on the back of a European Court ruling that they breached human rights - on the grounds that prisons had failed to provide inmates access to the rehabilitation courses required to demonstrate to the Parole Board that they were safe to be released.

But the abolition wasn't retrospective, so by 2019 there remained 2,489 prisoners still locked up on IPP sentences.

Among them was Wayne Bell who was just 17 when he was locked up

Read more on manchestereveningnews.co.uk