The worst of sentencing innovations

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.