IPP: Prisoners serving indefinite prison terms

In July 2000, eight-year-old Sarah Payne was murdered by Roy Whiting, a convicted pedophile who had been released early from a four-year sentence for kidnapping and assaulting a little girl. The resulting outcry was one reason why New Labour, keen to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, decided to devise a new type of preventive sentence for dangerous offenders who were not eligible for a life sentence.

“The sentence of prison for public protection” (IPP) was introduced under the Criminal Justice Act 2003; it would be given to people convicted of one of 96 serious violent or sexual crimes (with a maximum sentence of ten years or more) if the court finds the offender to be a threat to the public. These people were to serve a minimum period of incarceration, the “tariff,” before being eligible for parole. If the parole board decides he no longer poses a risk, the offender will be released on licence. But in practice they could be detained indefinitely; and even when released on licence, they might be recalled to prison.

The Labor government has predicted that only a few hundred IPP sentences will be needed 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 PPIs if conditions were met – thousands were handed out, many 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, giving judges more discretion, then abolished in 2012 after a highly critical European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgment. Even so, IPP sentences imposed before December 2012 remained in force.

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Crucially, many of those granted PPIs have committed relatively low-level offences. In 2006, Martin Myers threatened a man who refused to give him a cigarette. He was given an IPP sentence with a tariff of 19 months and 27 days; 18 years later, he is still in prison. In 2007, Wayne Bell was convicted of assaulting a boy and stealing his bicycle; he remains in prison. So is Aaron Graham, who was sentenced in 2005 to two years and 124 days for punching a man in a fight; and Thomas White, who was sentenced to a minimum of two years in 2012, for stealing a mobile phone.

Under the IPP regime, the burden of proof is on prisoners to demonstrate to the parole board that they no longer pose a threat to the public before they have any chance of release – a burden described by former justice secretary Ken Clarke as “almost impossible. ” for some prisoners to meet. In many cases, inmates have not had access to the resources they need to progress through the prison system: they are required to take courses in offender behavior and rehabilitation that are not available in some prisons This was the reason why, in the ECtHR case (James, Wells and Lee v. the United Kingdom), the Strasbourg court found that the right of prisoners to be protected against unlawful deprivation of liberty was violated. makes rehabilitation even more difficult.

The “uncertainty inherent in sentencing” makes PPIs particularly psychologically harmful, noted a 2022 report by the Commons Justice Committee. “Because release is conditional on parole,” he continued, “there is no way for an inmate to know when, if ever, he will be released.” This often creates a vicious cycle: there is much evidence that PPIs worsen the mental health of prisoners; but poor mental health is a risk factor for parole boards, so they are less likely to release prisoners. Campaign organization United Group for IPP Reform says 287 people who received an IPP sentence have died in prison. Ninety took their own lives. People serving IPP sentences are 2.6 times more likely than those serving life or determinate sentences to self-harm.

In 2022, the Commons committee recommended new legislation to allow all IPP prisoners still in prison to be “sentenced”, saying it was the “only way” to tackle this “unique injustice”. However, the recommendation was rejected by the then justice secretary Dominic Raabon the grounds that it “could lead to the immediate release of many offenders who have been assessed as unsafe for release by the Parole Board”: the political risk of releasing prisoners who might go on to commit serious crimes is considerable. Raab’s successor, Alex Chalk, unveiled a plan to see IPP offenders who have been released for certain periods have their sentences “finished” from next month – bringing about 1,800 sentences to an end.

The Labor government has also so far rejected the idea of sentencing all IPP prisoners or changing the Parole Board test – apparently because of concerns about releasing dangerous prisoners. In principle, if not in practice, the IPP regime has been repudiated. David Blunkett, the Labor home secretary who introduced it, described it as the “biggest regret” of his career. Lord Brown, a former Supreme Court judge, called it a “stain” on the British judiciary. Prisoners, he said, “are being punished for what they might do in the future” and described this type of “preventive detention” as “alien and inimical to our legal system”.