IPPs: prisoners serving endless prison sentences

In July 2000, eight-year-old Sarah Payne was murdered by convicted pedophile Roy Whiting, who was sentenced to four years in prison for kidnapping and assaulting a teenage girl. The resulting outcry was one reason why New Labor, determined to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, decided to devise a new type of provisional sentencing for dangerous criminals who were not eligible for life sentences.

sentence ” Imprisonment for public protection” (IPP) It was introduced under the Criminal Justice Act 2003; It will be given to people convicted of one of 96 serious violent or sexual offenses (which carry a maximum prison sentence of ten years or more) if the court considers the offender to be a threat to the public. These individuals would be detained for a minimum period of time, called a “tariff,” before being eligible for parole. If the Parole Board determined that they no longer posed a risk, the offender would be released on parole. However, in practice they can be detained indefinitely; and even if they were released on licence, they could be recalled to prison.

The Labor government has predicted that only a few hundred IPP fines will be required each year, reserved for the most serious violent and sexual offences. But as a result of the way the law was structured (courts had to impose IPP if conditions were met), thousands were handed out, mostly for relatively minor offences. Serious problems were identified from the outset, including the pressure they put on the prison system. The IPP regime was reformed in 2008 to restrict its use by giving judges greater discretion, and was subsequently abolished in 2012 following a highly critical ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgment. Despite this, BYP penalties imposed before December 2012 remained in effect.

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Importantly, most of those given IPP had committed relatively low-level crimes. In 2006, Martin Myers threatened a man who refused to give him a cigarette. He was sentenced to 19 months and 27 days of scheduled BES; He is still in prison 18 years later. In 2007, Wayne Bell was convicted of assaulting a child and stealing his bike; remains in prison. Aaron Graham, who was sentenced to two years and 124 days in prison for punching a man in a fight in 2005, is the same way; and Thomas White, who was sentenced to at least two years in prison in 2012 for stealing a cell phone.

Under the IPP regime, with no chance of release, the onus is on prisoners to prove to the Parole Board that they are no longer a threat to the public; It’s a burden that former justice secretary Ken Clarke described as “almost impossible”. “For some prisoners to meet. In many cases prisoners do not have access to the resources they need to progress within the prison system; they are required to undertake criminal behavior and rehabilitation courses that are not available in some prisons. In the ECHR case (James, Wells and Lee v. the United Kingdom) the Strasbourg court found that prisoners were unlawfully deprived of their freedom This is why it has been determined that their right to protection against deprivation has been violated. Moreover, the psychological strain of IPPs makes rehabilitation even more difficult.

The “uncertainty inherent in sentencing” makes IPPs particularly psychologically damaging, according to a 2022 report by the House of Commons Justice Committee. “Because release is conditional on parole, a prisoner has no way of knowing when he will be released.” This often creates a vicious cycle: there is ample evidence that IPPs worsen prisoners’ mental health; but because poor mental health is a risk factor for parole boards, they are less likely to release inmates. Campaigning organization IPP United Reform Group says 287 people on IPP sentences have died in prison. Ninety of them took their own lives. People serving IPP sentences are 2.6 times more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment or self-harm than those sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 2022, a House of Commons committee proposed new legislation that would allow all IPP prisoners still in prison to be “resentenced”, saying it was the “only way” to address this “unique injustice”. However, the proposal was rejected by the then minister of justice. Dominic RaabOn the grounds that this “could lead to the immediate release of many offenders whose release is deemed unsafe by the Parole Board”: The political risk of releasing prisoners who may go on to commit serious crimes is considerable. Raab’s successor, Alex Chalk, has announced a plan to “end” the sentences of IPP offenders who have been released for periods of time from next month; This will lead to the termination of an estimated 1,800 suspensions.

The Labor government has also so far rejected the idea of charging all IPP prisoners or changing the Parole Board test – apparently due to concerns about the release of dangerous prisoners. The IPP regime was rejected in principle, if not in practice. Introducing it, Labor Home Secretary David Blunkett described it as the “greatest regret” of his career. Lord Brown, a former judge of the Supreme Court, described it as a “stain” on British justice. He said the prisoners were “punished for what they might do in the future” and that such “preventive detention” was “alien and contrary to our legal system.”

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