The scandal of “totalitarian” indefinite jail terms has left prisoners profoundly damaged by the “state’s failure” to rehabilitate them, a former Tory justice secretary has warned.
Alex Chalk KC said Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) jail terms are “overbearing” and “unfair” as he urged his successor Shabana Mahmood to look carefully at fresh proposals to end the historic wrong.
In a candid interview after leaving government a year ago, he described the abolished jail terms as a “state overreach” which have left thousands languishing in prison for up to 22 times longer than their original tariff.
He told The Independent and the podcast Trapped: The IPP Scandal: “If you take the time to explain to people how the state has got things wrong and that this is a state overreach, and that ultimately it has acted in a way which is overbearing, unfair and almost totalitarian, then I think that offends against most British people’s sense of justice.”
More than 2,500 inmates are still trapped under the outlawed jail terms, which have been described by the UN as “psychological torture”. They were abolished in 2012, but not retrospectively, leaving those already jailed incarcerated indefinitely.
Victims of the scandal, whose tragic cases have been highlighted by The Independent, include: Leroy Douglas, who has served almost 20 years for robbing a mobile phone; Thomas White, 42, who set himself alight in his cell and has served 13 years for stealing a phone; and Abdullahi Suleman, 41, who is still inside 19 years after he was jailed for a laptop robbery.
Mr Chalk, 48, a barrister who first encountered the sentence when he was prosecuting cases in the criminal courts, said he tried to address the “toxic legacy” of the jail terms when he ushered in changes by reducing the IPP licence period from 10 years to three.
Almost 1,800 people have had their licence terminated in the community following his reforms, passed under the Victims and Prisoners Act before last year’s general election.
He said that although many had committed serious offences, whether you consider yourself a “bleeding heart” or “tough on crime”, the jail term “offends against people’s sense of fairness in Britain”.
“There is not a single vote in taking that 10-year minimum period for an IPP down to three years,” he said. “A, because most people don’t understand it and B, insofar as they do understand it there is no sympathy for those individuals.
“But I did it because I thought it was right. I did it because I thought it was right and I’m absolutely sure it was the right thing to do.”
However, while in Rishi Sunak’s government, Mr Chalk stopped short of accepting recommendations from the justice committee that all IPP prisoners should be resentenced. The decision was branded “not good enough” by campaigners after 94 IPP prisoners have taken their own lives as they lose hope of ever being released.
He warned that Ms Mahmood has a tough problem to solve as she considers fresh proposals from the Howard League for Penal Reform and former top judge Lord John Thomas to end the injustice by giving prisoners a release date at their next review by the Parole Board within a two-year window.
He admitted some prisoners who are automatically freed from regular, determinate jail terms would not pass the Parole Board’s release test, but this is still demanded of all IPP prisoners.
In some cases, he believes their long-term incarceration is what has made them too dangerous to pass this test.
He said: “So the injustice can be framed as follows: that you have people who were considered dangerous, but for whom there was hope for rehabilitation some 10, 15, 20 years ago, and yet the experience of being in custody, of having languished under these unfair orders, has for some turned them into extremely volatile and dangerous people.
“And so the exam question is, how do you right this historic wrong without leading innocent members of the public to pay the price for the state’s failure?”
He continued: “The wickedness of it is, as I say, the state is very much part of why they are too dangerous. So what do you do? Well, I think that the proposal that the Howard League and Lord Thomas have come up with is certainly worthy of careful consideration.”
Although he would be “twitchy” about agreeing to a release date for remaining IPP prisoners within a two-year window, Mr Chalk “wouldn’t rule it out” if it came with additional safeguards such as tagging and enhanced monitoring.
This would ensure prisoners were “guided, as it were, not to a cliff edge from custody to freedom but much more of a glide path towards a rehabilitated future”, he said.
However he backed the Howard League’s calls for fewer IPP prisoners to be recalled for minor breaches of licence conditions, agreeing that the threshold is currently “too low”.
“Our duty as the state is to throw all the resources we can at making this person better to try to get them to stand on their own two feet to lead a law-abiding life, and that is our obligation,” he added.
The Howard League’s proposals were put together by a panel of Britain’s top justice experts led by Lord Thomas, who served as lord chief justice from 2013 to 2017.
The ex-judge, who is a member of the House of Lords, believes the “practical solutions” could be the last chance to help those on the jail term, warning that without action some IPP prisoners will languish in jail until they die.
Urging the state to take responsibility for its own mistakes, he insisted “enough is enough”, noting that if these prisoners had committed their crime a day after the sentence was abolished, they would have long been freed.
“It is time to address this problem in the way we have set out, which produces justice and minimises risk as much as possible,” added the judge, who last year backed The Independent’s campaign to review IPP sentences.
The government has said ministers will “carefully consider” the Howard League’s recommendations.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “It is right that IPP sentences were abolished. IPP prisoners are considered for release by the independent Parole Board every two years and those who are deemed safe will be released.
“The government is supporting IPP prisoners to achieve their release but this must be done in a way that does not put the public at risk.”
Mr Chalk’s interview will also be featured in Trapped: The IPP Prisoner Scandal.
