Quakers welcome sentencing changes
1,800: The number of people to be given an end-date to their Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences.
More than 1,800 people who have received Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences in England and Wales will now be given an end date for their terms, the Ministry of Justice announced last month.
Long campaigned against by Quakers, IPP sentences were abolished in 2012 but not retrospectively, leaving people languishing in prison. The sentences were imposed on 8,711 people, some for seemingly-minor offences.
‘A government press release, issued on 28 November, confirms that there is finally some movement on the termination of the much-criticised sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection,’ Melanie Jameson, clerk of Quakers in Criminal Justice Group (QICJ), said. ‘However this will only affect those who have been out in the community without recall for five years, or after three years following a positive parole hearing. These changes will not take place until after the Victims & Prisoners Bill (currently in progress) has received royal assent.’
Currently, IPP offenders have to wait a minimum of ten years before they can have their licence reviewed by the parole board. The new changes will mean IPP offenders serving their sentence in the community are referred for review three years after their first release. Even if the parole board says no, their sentence will automatically terminate after a further two years if they are not recalled to jail in that time. The changes will apply retrospectively.
Melanie Jameson welcomed the move but stressed that ‘it does nothing to alleviate the desperate situation of those languishing in prison with an IPP, most of whom are way over their original tariff. The Justice Select Committee’s core recommendation had been the resentencing of all IPP prisoners so they no longer suffer the stress of an indeterminate sentence, with those out in the community subject to immediate recall to prison.’
Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, described the changes as ‘a major step towards wiping away the stain of IPP sentences from our justice system, without compromising public protection’.
In September, Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) urged the government to re-sentence people who have been given indeterminate sentences. A report last year described the sentences as ‘irredeemably flawed’, fuelling feelings of despair and high levels of self-harm and some suicides. A call from the Justice Select Committee for all IPP prisoners to be resentenced was rejected by the government.
As of 30 September there were 2,921 IPP prisoners, 1,269 of whom have never been released, with the remaining 1,652 having been recalled to custody.
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