Indeterminate sentences for public protection criticised by research
By Alan Travis
Thousands of prisoners have been left locked up in a "bureaucratic limbo" in jails in England and Wales without a date for their release, according to a research report published today.
Leading criminologists say that the indeterminate sentence for public protection (IPP), which was introduced in April 2005, has wrought havoc in the justice system and proved "one of the least carefully planned and implemented pieces of legislation in the history of sentencing".
The joint report by the Prison Reform Trust and the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at King's College, London, says that more than 6,034 people had been given an IPP sentence by the end of last year and well over 2,500 of them have already passed their "tariff point" – the minimum date after which the Parole Board can authorise their release. Almost 500 are at least two years past their minimum release date.
The report says that the explosion in the use of IPP sentences by the courts – 6,000 rising at the rate of 75 a month and a negligible release rate – has placed an impossible burden on an already overstretched prison service.
The authors, Jessica Jacobson and Mike Hough, say that an urgent review of the use of the sentence needs to be carried as part of the government's wider reviewing of sentencing policy now under way. It argues that many IPP prisoners are unable to get on the offending behaviour courses they need to persuade the Parole Board to fix their release date, leaving them with no means of gaining legitimate release.
The report says the unfairness of the situation is particularly intense for 1,600 serving IPP sentences with tariffs of less than two years who were sentenced before a minimum term of two years was introduced in 2008: "Almost all this group remain in prison, serving terms well in excess of their tariff in the knowledge that people sentenced for similar offences after the amendments will have already have completed their sentences," says the report. Only 94 of this group had been released by December last year.
The mother of an IPP prisoner in that group told the authors of the impact on her family: "We feel that the situation created by the imposition of an IPP on our son, for what is not now classified as a serious offence, is cruel and inhumane. We should be able to plan for his release, having a date to work towards. All we have is this Kafkaesque nightmare, to which there seems no end."
The former home secretary, Lord Hurd of Westwell, says in a foreword to the report that the net is being too widely drawn for IPP sentences being used not only for those who pose a continuing risk to public safety but also for those who are the most vulnerable due to mental illness or a learning disability.
"A prison system in which over 2,500 people are held well beyond tariff loses legitimacy in the eyes of those charged with its management and the public," he says.
The new prisons minister, Crispin Blunt, has acknowledged that the Coalition government has inherited a very serious problem with IPP prisoners: "Many cannot get on courses because our prisons are wholly overcrowded and unable to address offending behaviour. That is not a defensible position," he recently told the Commons.
Related content:
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The IPP, or indeterminate sentence of imprisonment, is leaving too many prisoners still in jail after their minimum tariffs have expired
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