Lunch with… Shirley Debono and Donna Mooney

“Our February episode of ‘Lunch with…’ features two prominent IPP campaigners, Shirley Debono and Donna Mooney.

Shirley Debono is part of the UNGRIPP campaign. Her son was sentenced to a two-and-a-half-year tariff in 2006 for street robbery. He had served his tariff but didn’t get out on parole. That was when Shirley started her campaign.

It wasn’t long before she learned that there were thousands of prisoners serving sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) who, like Shirley’s son, were caught in the net. Shirley is also a McKenzie friend to so many IPP prisoners and helps them through the process of getting prepared for parole or helping those that find it hard to progress.

Campaigning on this issue is a job to Shirley and she will, alongside Donna, continue to push for change as long as it takes.

Donna Mooney is the sister of Tommy Nicol, who died in HMP The Mount after having a mental health crisis whilst serving an IPP sentence.

Since Tommy’s suicide in 2015, Donna has been campaigning for change to the IPP sentence in the hope it stops others going through what her brother went through and what her family now have to live with.

Donna has been part of a group of people who set up UNGRIPP, a group campaigning on behalf of those given an IPP sentence. She also runs a Twitter account, @Formybr0ther, in memory of Tommy and to fight for IPP reform.”