Given the overcrowding crisis in Britain’s prisons and the fact that the criminal justice system is teetering on the brink of collapse, it is doubly troubling that there are still around 2,400 people in prison under the discredited system of imprisonment for public protection (IPP).
There is good reason to believe that at least some of these men and women, many of them incarcerated long ago for relatively minor offences, could be released or let out on licence with no risk to the public. Instead, they remain in captivity, serving literally indefinite sentences, with some harshly punished even for minor breaches of their parole conditions.
It is a grotesque system. It is time to end the injustice – and to free up the much-needed cells for criminals who genuinely deserve to be there. Yet, as The Independent reveals, under the current inadequate plan to deal with these distressing cases, by 2030 there will still be at least 500 people under lock and key with no release date – and quite possibly many more.
Indefinite sentences are a bizarre perversion of the concept of justice and the simple principle of “making the punishment fit the crime”. They were introduced during the Blair administration, the unhappy result of a moral panic about crime, as a way of detaining those deemed a risk to the public but whose offences were not serious enough to justify long custodial terms. Illogically, they were sent down for what might actually – and sometimes has – turned out to be longer stretches than those served by some murderers.
The denial of natural justice and elimination of hope has, entirely predictably, led to the breakdown of prisoners’ mental health, and affected their behaviour and also their capacity for rehabilitation – even if they have resisted the temptation to self-harm or take their own lives. It must be acknowledged that the spectrum of IPP inmates ranges from property offences to major sexual crimes. But none deserve an endless sentence, least of all one that serves no useful purpose for the public.
So discredited and impractical did the IPP system become that it was abolished in 2012. Even the toughest of “law and order” politicians have no desire to revive an almost literal policy of “lock ’em up and throw away the key”. There are individuals jailed for the robbery of mobile phones or bicycles decades ago who are still paying their debt to society many years later.
The home secretary responsible for introducing IPP, David Blunkett, no softy, has since denounced the policy. No one now defends it. Yet for this beleaguered group still languishing in prison, it remains very much in operation.
The government is attempting to address these injustices through an “IPP action plan”. It misses the point and is likely to miss its own deadlines. The fundamental flaw is its reliance on the ordinary parole system to deal with what are plainly extraordinary cases. In doing so, it effectively doubles down on the original mistake – attempting to make the unworkable workable – with the predictable result that progress on orderly release, proper reassessment and reintegration into the community has been painfully slow.
What both natural justice and practical necessity dictate is a mechanism for resentencing, taking into account all relevant factors – the original crime, time served, subsequent conduct, mental and physical health, the risk to public safety and the likelihood of reoffending. The tragedy is that the sheer length of incarceration, and the strain it has imposed, has in some cases made individuals less capable of release than they might have been a decade ago.
But whether safe for release or not, every case deserves to be re-examined under a dedicated resentencing regime and resolved in a rational and proportionate manner.
It is disappointing that David Lammy, the justice secretary, and Lord Timpson, the prisons minister, both with experience in this field, should still preside over such a scandalous and inhumane situation. Perhaps they lack a clear solution. Perhaps they are wary of retrospective correction. Or perhaps they fear the political and media backlash should a released IPP prisoner commit a further heinous offence.
None of these is sufficient reason to perpetuate a thoroughly unjust and potentially dangerous system. Those who present a genuine threat must, of course, remain in custody. But the victims of IPP deserve to be treated like any other offender. IPP failed long ago; it cannot be salvaged by any “action plan”. It has damaged too many lives and shattered too many families. It is time to end the nightmare.
