A prisoner left a message on the roof of Strangeways during a 12-hour protest.
The inmate climbed up onto the roof and wrote 'FREE IPPZ' in big white letters. He was also heard repeatedly shouting "free IPPs" during the standoff.
His protest seemed to be a related to the now abolished court sanction titled Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences (IPP). The sentences were scrapped back in 2012, however, the abolition wasn't retrospective so some prisoners locked up remain on them.
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IPPs have caused controversy over the years, with the European Court ruling that they breached human rights almost a decade ago. In 2005, the then Home Secretary David Blunkett first introduced Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences (IPP).
The sentences meant that 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 by the board, they remained behind bars.
However, IPP prisoners weren't given access to rehabilitation courses, meaning many struggled to prove they were fit to be released. The MEN reports, that they lost hope and many of them kicked off behind bars.
Average prisoners tend to serve 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 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 17 when he was locked up for robbery in 2007 - he punched another lad and took his bike in Ladybarn Park in south Manchester. He was among the first convicts to be handed the new type of sentence - since discredited and abolished as 'unjust'.
Every two years he went before the parole board but each time he was turned down amid continuing concerns about whether he was safe to be released. His probation officer also thought he wasn't safe to be released, according to his family.
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