"Catch 22"

According to the Daily Telegraph "Prisons strategy in disarray after ruling". However, Labour's sentencing strategy has been in disarray, which threw the prisons into disarray, long before the Court of Appeal ruling in David Walker's and Nicholas Wells' case. Only today the Prison Reform Trust released its report into the causes of this disarray. This is what happens when the rules of American Baseball are incorporated into the criminal laws of England. The three strikes and you are out rule led to Indefinite Public Protection sentences (IPPs). Laws need to be thought out properly and drafted properly, because knee-jerk reactions to tabloid headlines only lead to chaos. What makes it worse is that it was lawyers in the government who advocated and pushed for these laws to be written into the statute books in the first place. And judges who implemented the laws, and finally the quasi-judicial body of the Parole Board playing God.

Whilst Lord Justice Laws and Mr Justice Mitting were right to rule in favour of the prisoners in this case, they were wrong to allow Jack Straw, the Minister of Justice, a stay on the declaration, to appeal, on the ground that it was "potentially very disruptive of the prison system as a whole" to release the prisoners. It may be embarrassing politically, tough shit.

Offenders are given a IPPs on the basis of their alleged risk to the public. In effect, it is a life sentence. The Judiciary is against this type of sentence because it is an attempt by the Executive to remove a judge's discretion to impose a sentence he or she thinks fits the crime or criminal. Like with a real life sentence, a judge imposes a minimum tariff to reflect the twin aims of retribution and deterrence. With a real life sentence, there is time to go through the various stages (jump the hoops) before release. However, with IPPs judges have been imposing tariffs of 2 and 3 years which reflects the sentence they would have given but for the interference by the Executive. The Parole Board is under strain with the real life sentences as it is without the case load of the false life sentences. The onus is upon the prisoner to show that he or she is no longer a risk to the public. To achieve this the prisoner has to undergo courses which the Parole Board measures a reduction in risk. Because the prisons are overcrowded, places on these courses are in short supply and some prisoners are unable to access them. Because the prisoners cannot show that they are no longer a risk to the public, the Parole Board refuses to release them even though it is recognised that the fault does not lie with the prisoners.