When police knocked on her front door, Rachel* had no idea it would be the worst day of her life.
She and her son, Joshua*, were still in bed, but when she let the officers inside, leaving him to play on the floor behind a stairgate, she was told she was being recalled to prison – indefinitely – under a sentence she was handed for a street robbery 20 years ago. They said her son, from whom she had never spent a night apart, was being taken into care.
Officers could not even say why she was being recalled, simply telling her it was due to “poor behaviour”. She later learned it was triggered by a single call to police from a teenage neighbour over an alleged alcohol-fuelled altercation with a family member days earlier, which Rachel disputes ever happened and has not resulted in any charge.
“My mind just stopped,” she told The Independent. “But then I grabbed my son and said, ‘no, no, I’m not going. Why, why, why?’ I was squeezing him, saying no, I’m going to lose him. I don’t even know what I have done.”
In a panic, Rachel started packing a bag for Joshua, desperate to keep his baby things safe. She tried to gather up as much as possible, knowing that under the terms of her draconian Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence, she could serve years behind bars on recall even without being convicted of any further crimes.
Before that day, social services had been preparing to reduce its oversight of the family, who were thriving. Their social worker had tears in her eyes as she arrived to collect the toddler from his handcuffed mother. Initially, Rachel was not even allowed to change her son’s overnight nappy, but was eventually permitted to dress him before handing him over to officials.
Later, at the police station, she used her five-minute phone call to ring the social worker, who had just collected Joshua from nursery. “That broke my heart, I could hear him in the background shouting mama, mama,” she recalled, adding: “That day was the worst day of my life.”
Three months later, Rachel is still fighting to get her son back from foster care. She was released from prison in eight weeks after officials ruled the decision to haul her back to prison – ripping apart her small family – should be reversed.
Regardless, a family court must now assess whether she can care for Joshua. Among the issues they are investigating is whether the strict IPP licence itself – which can see her recalled without warning for any further alleged offending, even if it is unproven – is “incompatible” with providing consistent care for a child because it creates instability.
Rachel is among thousands of people still trapped under the controversial IPP jail terms, which were outlawed in 2012, but not retrospectively.
The open-ended punishments, introduced under New Labour in a bid to be tough on crime, were handed to many repeat offenders, even if their crimes were minor. The idea was that criminals would only be released when they could prove to a Parole Board that they no longer pose a risk to the public.
But the ill-conceived sentence has left thousands to languish without release for up to 22 times their original minimum term, while others – such as Rachel – have found themselves in a vicious cycle of recall, often for breaches of strict licence conditions.
‘I felt doomed regardless’
Back in a women’s prison in the north of England, Rachel believed it was “game over” and feared her son would be adopted. After two decades serving an IPP sentence, this was her seventh recall to prison, but her first since becoming a mother to Joshua.
She was handed an IPP following a string of previous convictions after being groomed into sex work as a child and struggling with drug misuse, which began after losing a baby delivered prematurely at 22 weeks.
Her initial tariff was just 17 months for robbery, but she has spent two decades in and out of custody until she fell pregnant with Joshua, who was her “chance” at a new life.
Even though she was confident she had done nothing to warrant the latest recall, she felt she was “doomed regardless”. The mother knew that in a worst-case scenario, it could be up to two years until she got a parole hearing and even then, a panel might refuse her release.
On average, IPP prisoners serve 25 months in jail each time they are recalled, regardless of whether licence breaches or other allegations are proven.
“Nothing is ever taken into account,” she said, adding that anyone could make an allegation against her, which would send her back to prison. “We are not listened to because if you are an IPP, you’ve done the crime no matter what. It’s so sad.”
But thankfully, she was eligible for Risk Assessed Recall Review (RARR) – a new power introduced in 2024, which allows the justice secretary to re-release recalled IPP prisoners without Parole Board approval.
It felt like my ‘heart had been ripped out’
During the two months in prison she waited to learn her fate, she said it felt like her “heart had been ripped out” not being with her child.
“He is my everything, I don’t know how I will cope if I don’t get out and lose him,” she wrote in letters from custody.
Joshua’s foster carer brought him in for weekly visits, while she attended family court hearings from prison in a bid to win back her son. Court documents warned their abrupt separation had caused the toddler “significant emotional harm”.
But even upon release, Rachel was sent back to an empty home, and her time with Joshua was limited to four “intrusive” supervised visits a week. This was relaxed to supported visits after five weeks, in which Joshua is dropped off for three hour-visits, with regular checks from social workers.
Rachel had made the difficult decision to support Joshua remaining in foster care until she can prove herself to the family court, which ordered a parenting assessment. Her attitude was praised by the family court judge, who must decide on Joshua’s long-term home.
A good mother but ‘high risk’
In a series of family court hearings, which The Independent was granted permission to report on, the judge and lawyers found themselves struggling to reconcile the draconian nature of Rachel’s licence with positive assessments of her parenting from social services.
The IPP licence is cited in court papers as a reason for Joshua’s removal from her care, noting: “IPP recalls are sudden and unpredictable, creating ongoing instability for Joshua, who is a very young child.”
At one point, commenting on the hair-trigger recall process, Rachel’s lawyer said: “… as soon as there’s anything flagged, somebody can call up and make an allegation about mum and she gets recalled, but the issue of fault is not an issue for the police, unfortunately.”
A lawyer for the local authority, which is currently responsible for providing Joshua’s care, also questioned why probation had assessed the mother as a high-risk of harm to children.
The court heard this was in part due to probation concerns over Rachel’s drinking. The mother, who wore an alcohol tag, was limited to three alcohol events each week, with no more than a moderate intake.
In her submissions to the court, she accepted that she had been drinking two or three cans of lager a few times each week. Readings during the alleged assault, which triggered her recall, indicated she had four to seven units in her system, the equivalent of two to three pints of lager.
On re-release, she has agreed to total abstinence, which is monitored by a tag.
‘Joshua is my chance’
In her submissions, Rachel also agreed that, before falling pregnant with Joshua, she was stuck in a cycle of release and recall. With little support in the community, she would fall back into old habits.
But she insists she turned her life around when she discovered she was unexpectedly pregnant.
In her appeal to the court, she wrote: “I will conclude by saying that I love Joshua very much. He is absolutely everything to me, and I will do anything to get him back. I have a really good relationship with his social worker, and I am grateful for all the support she has provided us so far. I am also grateful to Joshua’s foster carers who bring him to contact. They have reassured me that he is being well cared for.”
She has agreed to regular hair strand testing for drug use and will submit to a psychological assessment, if the court decides it is needed, in her fight to win back custody of her son.
But even if Joshua is returned to her care, she must spend the next two years without any recalls before she can apply for her IPP licence to be terminated.
‘They should ask questions before recall’
Rachel has called for officials to properly investigate before triggering life-changing recalls for IPP prisoners. To date, she has never been arrested or questioned over the alleged incident, which led to her return to prison and called for a change in the recall process.
She said: “I have been recalled for an alleged offence, but if you read the reports, it’s like literally I have done it.
“Instead of being recalled straight back to jail, people should be spoken to or interviewed to see what’s going on. Obviously, if they have committed a crime, then yeah, people need to be recalled. But something that has been alleged, come and ask questions.”
Her main hope now is that Joshua is too young to remember the trauma of the past few months.
“I just hope it hasn’t got a lasting effect on him, because it’s not me who’s done it,” she said. “It’s just sad, sometimes when he’s going, he puts his lip out and starts getting upset.”
The mother, who is exploring whether she has grounds to appeal her IPP sentence, said the jail term had profoundly damaged her “self-worth, esteem and confidence”.
The uncertain nature of the IPP sentence has been described as “psychological torture” as thousands still languish without a release date, years after the sentence was scrapped. Almost 100 people have taken their own lives in prison after losing hope of getting out, with a further 37 suicides in the community where offenders live under the constant fear of recall.
However, successive governments have refused calls to address the scandal by resentencing all remaining IPP prisoners. The UN is currently investigating whether the government’s inaction amounts to human rights abuses, after two major complaints were lodged in the past year.
The architect of the flawed sentence, David Blunkett, is among those leading calls for the failed sentencing policy – which he has described as his biggest regret – to be put right, citing its “uncertainty, instability and consequent impact on their [prisoners’] life and rehabilitation”.
Recent reforms, due to be implemented this summer, allow offenders to apply to have their IPP licence terminated after two years in the community without recall. But there are still “far too many cases where unproven allegations of a breach of license is still leading to massive disruption which then, perversely, leads to a knock-on impact on family life,” Lord Blunkett added.
“This individual case illustrates the problem graphically and those of us in parliament who continue to press for change will focus, in the months ahead, on increasing understanding about the consequences of how this process works and therefore the crucial changes needed to stop the revolving door which recall to prison entails.”
A spokesperson for campaign group United Group for the Reform of IPP (UNGRIPP) added: “This unfair recall is a harrowing example of how the IPP sentence inflicts lifelong scars on innocent children long after a term has been served. It is a haunting injustice that even when a recall is acknowledged as wrong by the state, the separation continues.
“UNGRIPP is calling for the retrospective abolition of this sentence to protect families from further unnecessary, state-inflicted trauma.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “It is right that IPP sentences were abolished, and we have already taken action to support these offenders to move on with their lives by reducing the period these offenders can be recalled to support rehabilitation.
“We also understand that family court proceedings and decisions to move a child as a last resort can be deeply distressing. These decisions are made independently and only where the threshold for significant harm is met, with the child’s welfare always the paramount consideration.”
Names in this article have been changed to protect the family’s right to anonymity
