eBulletin, 14 October 2022

“Let us strike out now and clear its foul stench from our justice system”

The words of Lord Garnier, the former government minister, speaking yesterday in a House of Lords debate on the dreadful Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence.

Discredited and discontinued in 2012, IPP was never abolished retrospectively. To this day, more than 3,000 prisoners remain caught in its coils. Over 600 of those prisoners have served more than ten years over the sentence length originally imposed by the court (the so-called tariff).

A September report by the House of Commons Justice Committee described IPP as “irredeemably flawed” and called for wholesale reform, including a resentencing exercise for those still under the IPP regime. This would involve converting all existing IPP sentences, which are open-ended, into determinate sentences with an agreed end-date.

We welcome the Justice Committee report, including the resentencing recommendation, and call for the government to act swiftly and decisively to implement its recommendations. We would also go further.

For one thing, it cannot be right that, thanks to IPP, prisoners are languishing in prison for years after they have served the tariff originally set by the court. They should be released without delay, and certainly in advance of a resentencing exercise that, even if agreed, could take years to be completed.

We also argue that those subjected to the IPP sentence should be offered state reparations, on the basis of failures to provide programmes or to meet known mental health needs, and in recognition of the unjustified time in confinement.

The IPP was probably the worst sentencing ‘innovation’ introduced by the last Labour government. We need to learn the lessons and do our utmost to prevent a similar sentence being introduced in the future.

You can catch-up on all the work we have been doing on IPP here. I would also encourage you to check out the work of the campaign groups UNGRIPP and IPP Committee in Action, who have been doing important work on this issue.

Richard Garside
Director

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Off the press

The “toxic” Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence should be abolished as a matter of urgency, to restore a sense of justice and hope, according to our new report, released this week. The report, Imprisonment for Public Protection: Psychic Pain Redoubled, assembles evidence from a variety of sources. It identifies, at each stage of the sentence, an enduring pattern of discouragement and distress, culminating in despair, self-harm and suicide for a significant number.

The report’s primary recommendation is that those still in prison beyond the sentence length set by the court (the tariff) should be released without delay. Among the report’s other recommendations are an overarching legislative Code, influenced by provisions in the Human Rights Act, to help guard against similar misguided legislation in the future.

Coming up

We are working on an updated version of our report on joint enterprise prosecutions – The usual suspects – first published in April. The updated version, due before the end of the year, will include additional analysis of the data we published back in April.

Our popular Last Month in Criminal Justice and Lunch with... programmes will both be returning for a second series in late 2022/early 2023. If you’re new to these programmes, you can catch up on the first series here:

• We had Lunch with... some fascinating and inspiring activists and thinkers: Frances Crook, Pragna Patel, Suresh Grover, Whitney Iles, Shirley Debono, Donna Mooney, Gloria Morrison, Jan Cunliffe, Charlie Weinberg, Alex S Vitale and Khatuna Tsintsadze.
• The knowledgeable panellists on our Last month in Criminal Justice programmes discussed more criminal justice policy developments than you can shake a stick at.

We’ll be announcing the programmes in the new series via this bulletin.

Comment

Our comment pages carry a range of articles from our staff and external contributors. Recent contributions have included pieces on joint enterprise, probation, the criminalisation of poverty, the IPP sentence, and service-user involvement.

Check out our comment pages here. And if you fancy writing for our website, you can find the guidelines here.

This house believes...

In late September, our director, Richard, spoke at the University of Exeter debating society, opposing the motion “This house believes the law has nothing to do with justice”. He spoke alongside the former First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones.

You can read Richard’s speech here.

Ready for Reading

Over the summer we agreed a new partnership with the University of Reading. Connecting researchers and students with criminal justice practitioners and policy makers, the new partnership will create opportunities to discuss and explore a range of contemporary crime, justice and punishment challenges. We’re aiming to hold the first of what we intend to be an annual conference in 2023. In the meantime, check out this online event they are co-organising on supporting women to escape the criminal justice system.

Did you know?

In 2031 we will be marking our 100th anniversary as an organisation. Our new strategy, agreed over the summer, has been developed to help guide our work towards this important milestone. It includes a refreshed statement of our purpose: “We create lively spaces for collaboration and learning, where conventional criminal justice policy agendas are scrutinised and challenged, fresh knowledge and ideas are discussed, and transformational solutions are developed.”

In this piece, our Director, Richard, explains some of the thinking behind the new strategy.

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Support our work

In the last 12 months, around one pound in every ten we received in income came from individual donations. We are so appreciative of the vital support we receive from our donors and supporters.

If you like what we do, and can afford to make a donation to support our important work, we would be very grateful.

You can also spread the word about our work by forwarding on this bulletin to others and encouraging them to sign up.