Earlier today, the government published the first Annual Report on the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence.
The Report, written under the former Conservative government, was commissioned in September 2022 after the House of Commons Justice Select Committee released a report on IPP sentences, which made a series of recommendations.
Speaking in response to the Annual Report publication, our Director, Richard Garside, said:
The IPP system is reproducing itself like a virus, infecting everything that it touches. Short of decisive action, such as resentencing those under an IPP to a determinate (time-limited) sentence, the risk is that it will just continue to reproduce itself.
As the Report makes clear, the decline in the number of those under the IPP, whether in prison or the community has been glacially slow.
The number of IPP prisoners being released for the first time has been falling year on year, while the numbers being recalled to prison have been rising.
Releases of recalled IPP prisoners has not been keeping pace with the number of recalls. As a result, recalled IPP prisoners are spending longer and longer in prison.
The saddest page in the Annual Report is the one highlighting the growing toll of self-inflicted deaths of those in prison under the IPP.
The single-most consequential action the government could take would be to support Lord Woodley’s Private Member’s Bill on the resentencing of all those currently subject to the IPP sentence.
