Britain’s Forgotten Prisoners GFX

“With one public protection prisoner recently committing suicide after losing hope of ever being released, this film is an urgent call for all imprisonment for public protection cases to be reviewed.”

There are over three thousand forgotten prisoners languishing in jail in England and Wales, held indefinitely with no clear idea of when they’ll be released, even though they completed their sentences years ago. They are IPP prisoners—individuals given an additional indeterminate sentence, Imprisonment for Public Protection.

Martin Read’s film examines this punishment, which Conservative former Justice Minister Ken Clarke described as ‘a stain on the justice system.’ The documentary follows both the stories of individuals trapped in a Kafkaesque world of labyrinthine bureaucracy and those campaigning for their rights to have their lives returned to them.

Martin Read and Joe Sullivan invited me to work on their new documentary, Britain’s Forgotten Prisoners. We explored a broad content package for the film, including a bespoke section for the feature-length documentary—the trigger system used, a sort of proto-database from the early 2000s. To achieve the look of a retro Windows interface, I installed an early version of Windows, created templates, and screen-recorded the manipulation. I then digitally recreated the CRT feel that many crime-based documentaries feature, building a simulation in After Effects that I could also use for future projects in this style.