A prisoner trapped on an “inhumane” indefinite jail term has been cleared of multiple counts of criminal damage to a maximum-security prison after using the toll of his sentence as a defence in what is believed to be a legal first.
Joe Outlaw, who has ADHD, anxiety, paranoia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, said he was “absolutely desperate” and had been asking for help for days when he lashed out inside HMP Frankland.
On Monday, he was acquitted of 12 counts of criminal damage to the prison in Brasside, Durham, in May 2023, after telling the jury he was being starved in prison segregation.
However, he was found guilty of two counts of criminal damage and sentenced to three years for damaging a cell wall on 26 May 2023 and staging a rooftop protest the following month, which resulted in more than £170,000 of damage.
The 39-year-old has served almost 14 years in prison after he was handed a four-and-a-half-year Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence for robbing a takeaway with an imitation firearm in 2011.
Jurors at Teesside Crown Court were told the jail term, which was scrapped in 2012, has been repeatedly described as a “stain” on the justice system and linked to higher rates of suicide and self-harm, with at least 90 inmates taking their own lives in prison.
Following the verdict, Outlaw thanked his family and legal team, led by Christopher Tehrani KC, and vowed to keep fighting for those trapped under IPP jail terms.
“When I got on that roof, I was absolutely desperate, thinking I was going to die,” he said. “I’d been asking for help for days. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone — I just needed to escape and feel safe in a system that makes that almost impossible. That moment was the only way I felt I could survive.
“Even though I didn’t get the full outcome I hoped for, I’m not giving up. I’ll keep pushing for justice, for change, and for those still trapped in silence under the IPP system. This fight isn’t over.”
Giving evidence during a week-long trial, Outlaw said he began self-harming and damaging prison cells a few years into his sentence as he began to lose hope that he would be released.
“It’s just appalling, shocking, soul destroying,” said Outlaw, who believes he has been held in up to 44 different prisons since he was handed an IPP sentence.
“When you have hope you invest in that hope and when that goes away you just cut yourself off to save the hurt to avoid disappointment. That’s the truth of it.”
In total, he has been held in segregation for almost seven years of his sentence.
Due to his worsening paranoia about people tampering with his food during the pandemic, he was moved on to a special diet of tinned tuna, pre-packaged noodles and cous cous in 2020.
But when he was transferred to Frankland in May 2023, he was denied his usual diet because prison staff said a tin could be used as a weapon.
Outlaw told the court the refusal was “vindictive” and “retribution” from prison staff after he was transferred from HMP Manchester weeks earlier, following a similar rooftop protest after three IPP inmates had taken their own lives in quick succession.
He told the jury staff at Frankland were “just grinding me down by starving me”, adding that in other prison segregation units, officers were able to meet his dietary needs by simply opening the cans in front of him and passing him the tuna.
He told the court he feared prison officers were going to kill him after he was forcibly pulled from his cell on 25 May, pinned face-down on the floor and received two blows to his back as his clothes were cut off him. He was then punched in the face and thrown in a strip-search cell with only a suicide-prevention smock, he said.
“They thought they could get away with anything, and I thought I had to do something,” he told the court.
Footage played to the jury showed Outlaw, dressed only in his underwear, using a piece of broken heating pipe to crowbar roofing material and pull roof tiles off the building after he breached segregation security measures on 21 June 2023.
In mitigation, junior counsel Jamie Adams said Outlaw had been “crushed mentally” over many years by the inequity of the IPP system.
Jailing him for three years for causing “colossal” damage to the prison, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, Francis Laird K,C said the IPP sentence has “undoubtedly affected both your mental and psychological health”.
“You also have developed a sense of complete hopelessness as a result of the indeterminate nature of your sentence,” he added.
However, he noted Outlaw has multiple previous convictions for criminal damage at other jails and said he does not accept the claim that he had been assaulted by prison officers and feared further violence.
In February this year, Dr Alice Jill Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, warned that those languishing on IPP sentences are being subjected to “psychological torture” and warned that the government is “very likely” to be breaching their human rights by international standards.
She has called for the government to reconsider resentencing almost 2,500 still trapped on the “simply inhumane” prison term.
