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Next week, a fresh attempt will be made to resolve the scandal of the IPP sentence once and for all.
The attempt will come in the form of a Private Members’ Bill, by the Labour peer Lord Woodley: the Imprisonment for Public Protection (Resentencing) Bill.
The life sentence-like IPP was imposed on thousands of people between 2005 and 2012. Abolished in 2012, but not retrospectively, nearly 2,800 remain languishing in prison, sometimes for years after the term set by the court. This is equivalent to the population of four medium-sized men’s prisons. Those released from prison live under the shadow of recall to prison, often for minor infractions of licence conditions.
Lord Woodley’s Bill, if it becomes law, will place the Justice Secretary under a legal obligation to ensure that all those serving an IPP sentence, whether in prison or in the community, are retrospectively given a determinate sentence. For the vast majority of IPP prisoners this will result in their swift and more than justified release. Such an exercise was the primary recommendation of the House of Commons Justice Committee in its 2022 report on IPP.
Before the election, the outgoing Conservative government rejected resentencing. It did, though, pass legislation shortening the post-release licence conditions for released IPP prisoners, so reducing the number of released prisoners recalled to custody. Labour is yet to implement this change. It should get on with it.
While the government wrestles with the short-term prison capacity crisis – recent reports suggest that there are fewer than 100 places available across the entire estate in England and Wales – I hope that ministers and their advisers are also thinking long and hard about the medium-term capacity crisis barrelling quickly towards them.
The prison population currently stands at just over 88,000. Three years from now, if current projections are accurate, it could be more than 105,000, or even higher. Boosterish claims by ministers that they will build the necessary additional places to meet this demand appear slightly fanciful.
This is where a measure such as Lord Woodley’s Bill comes in. Resentencing all those subject to the IPP sentence will go some way to heading off the medium-term prison capacity crisis.
Labour, not unreasonably, argues that the immediate, short-term capacity crisis is a legacy of the outgoing Conservative government. But now Labour is in government. It is time to act.
If Labour continues to reject measures like the resentencing of those serving and IPP sentence, and other creative solutions to the medium-term capacity crisis coming down the road, the resulting mess will be on it alone.
Richard Garside
Director
Joint enterprise report out in September
Our new report – The Legal Dragnet – argues that the current vague laws on joint enterprise have become a lazy prosecutor’s charter, allowing for minor players and those on the periphery of crimes to be tried and convicted as if they were the perpetrator.
“The current law encourages the overcharging of suspects and allows cases to be propelled forward based on poor-quality evidence”, report author Nisha Waller, says. “Prosecutors are left to fill the gaps with speculative theories and often racialised narratives from which juries are invited to infer joint responsibility.”
The report is due out in September, but you can read this Guardian sneak preview.
In the news
Earlier this week our director, Richard Garside, spoke to David Bull on TalkTv, about the state of the justice system. He argued that the government should undertake a major review and come up with a long-term plan for the police, courts, prisons and probation service.
Earlier this month we joined several other organisations in calling for an end to child imprisonment in England. A report, from a coalition coordinated by Article 39, argues that child imprisonment is beyond reform. It also calls for responsibility for children deprived of their liberty to be transferred from the Ministry of Justice to the Department for Education.
Read the full report here, and check out coverage in The Guardian here.
Commentary and analysis
Ever wondered how public attitudes to crime and punishment have changed over time? Have voters become ever more fearful, ever more punitive, as some argue? Dr Matteo Tiratelli of University College London has crunched down sixty years of data into this perfectly formed short article. His article is based on a longer study, now out in The British Journal of Criminology (more on this below).
Matteo Tiratelli previously co-wrote for us this briefing on the effectiveness (or not) of police stop and search practices. After crunching ten years-worth of data, he and his fellow researchers found little evidence of impact of stop and search on violent crime and non-domestic violent crime and no evidence for its impact on robbery, theft or criminal damage.
In the first of a two-part series, doctoral student and regular contributor to our website, Katelyn Owens, explains why social research matters.
What’s what in The British Journal of Criminology?
For more than sixty years, The British Journal of Criminology has published some of the most significant research in the field. Here’s a run down of some of the new articles published this month:
- Elouise Davies, Polina Obolenskaya, Brian Francis, Niels Blom, Jessica Phoenix, Merili Pullerits and Sylvia Walby on why official crime survey data underestimates violence against women.
- Justin Kotzé on self-interest and criminality.
- Aitor Ibáñez Alonso and Nigel South on green criminology.
- Anita Lam and Steven Kohm on the pollution of Indigenous lands in Canada.
- Matteo Tiratelli on attitudes towards crime and punishment in England and Wales from the 1960s to the present day.
- Joshua Findlay on problems with current approaches to modern slavery.
Prison Service Journal
The September edition of Prison Service Journal (PSJ) looks at modern slavery and human trafficking. It will be available on the PSJ pages on our website next week.
In the meantime, check out previous PSJ editions here.
News from our partners
Our friends at StopWatch, who work to tackle the disproportionate and unjust use of police stop and search practices, are holding a strategy day on Saturday, 7 September. If you have the time, and think you can help StopWatch plan the next stage of their development, drop them a line.
The latest ‘Trapped’ podcast on the IPP scandal hears from Theresa, whose son Josh has been serving an IPP sentence since he was 18. Josh was sentenced to an IPP in 2008 for GBH. He is now 34. It also hears from Roddy Russell, who has had the first visit in 4½ years with his brother Robert. And it hears from Roddy and other campaigners, as they reflect on the appointment of James Timpson as Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation.
Download and listen to the episode, and access the Trapped back catalogue, here.
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