Indeterminate sentences are devastating to mental health, but prisoners with mental illness are less likely to be released. The result is a vicious cycle whereby the most vulnerable inmates often have the least chance of getting out – as John’s case shows
• More on this series: The IPP Scandal
At 16, John Wright was the way a lot of teenagers can be: one person at school, another person at home. At school, he was quiet, kept to himself. Behind closed doors, he was playful and chatty. He’d do backflips or cartwheels on the sofa while watching TV, or make silly noises at awkward moments to make his three siblings laugh. He was creative: he loved rapping, making his own beats, he played the guitar, liked drawing. The family would play basketball together, near the sleepy cul-de-sac where they lived. Those basketball games are the part that John’s mum, Lynn, remembers now – that and driving her kids around, windows down, Motown pumping out of the speakers, and all of them singing along.
At school, John was a bit of a target. It probably didn’t help that he stood out – he was tall for his age, skinny. In the years his school friend Jamie knew John, he never once saw him initiate anything. He never picked on anyone, made fun of anyone, started fights. But if anyone took the piss out of John, he wouldn’t back down. He was the one who usually got punished if anything kicked off. His sister, Joanna, worried about him. Anyone who said, “Oh, John, do this”, he would go and do it. That was his way of making friends. So when, as a 14-year-old, he fell in with a group of boys who kept getting into trouble, the family grew concerned.
