IPPs: the prisoners who serve endless prison sentences

In July 2000, eight-year-old Sarah Payne was murdered by Roy Whiting, a convicted pedophile who had been released early from a four-year prison sentence for kidnapping and assaulting a young girl. The resulting outrage was one of the reasons why New Labour, keen to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, decided to design a new type of precautionary sentence for dangerous offenders who were not eligible for a life sentence imprisonment.

The “meaning of imprisonment for public protection” (IPP) was introduced under the Criminal Justice Act 2003; it would be given to people convicted of one of 96 serious violent or sexual crimes (carrying a maximum sentence of ten years or more) if the court found the perpetrator posed a threat to the public. These people would serve a minimum prison sentence, the “tariff,” before being eligible for parole. If the Parole Board decided they no longer posed a risk, the perpetrator would be set free. But in practice they could be held indefinitely; and even if released on license they could be recalled to prison.

The Labor government predicted that only a few hundred IPP sentences would be needed each year, reserved for the most serious violent and sexual offences. But due to the way the law was structured – courts had to impose IPPs if conditions were met – thousands were handed out, many for relatively minor offences. Serious problems were identified from the outset, including the strain they placed on the prison system. The IPP regime was reformed in 2008 to limit its use by giving judges more latitude, and then abolished in 2012, following a highly critical European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgement. However, IPP penalties imposed before December 2012 remained in force.

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Crucially, many of the people given an IPP had committed relatively minor crimes. In 2006, Martin Myers threatened a man who refused to give him a cigarette. He was given an IPP sentence with a tariff of 19 months and 27 days; 18 years later, he is still in prison. In 2007, Wayne Bell was convicted of assaulting a boy and stealing his bicycle; he remains in prison. That includes Aaron Graham, who was sentenced to two years and 124 days in 2005 for punching a man during a fight; and Thomas White, who was sentenced to a minimum of two years in 2012 for stealing a cell phone.

Under the IPP regime, the burden is on prisoners to prove to the Parole Board that they no longer pose a threat to the public before they have any chance of release – a burden described by former Justice Secretary Ken Clarke as ‘almost impossible’. ‘ so that some prisoners could meet each other. In many cases, prisoners have not had access to the resources they need to get through the prison system: they have to take courses on offender behavior and rehabilitation that are not available in some prisons. This was why the Strasbourg court in the ECtHR case (James, Wells and Lee v. UK) ruled that prisoners’ right to protection against unlawful deprivation of liberty had been violated. Furthermore, the psychological burden of IPPs makes rehabilitation even more difficult.

The “uncertainty inherent in punishment” makes IPPs particularly psychologically damaging, according to a 2022 Commons Justice Committee report. “Because release is conditional on parole,” the report continued, “it is impossible for a prisoner to to know when he or she will ever be released.” This often creates a vicious cycle: there is ample evidence that IPPs worsen the mental health of inmates; but poor mental health is a risk factor for parole boards, making them less likely to release prisoners. The campaign organization United Group for Reform or IPP says 287 people who received IPP sentences have died in prison. Ninety have committed suicide. People serving IPP sentences are 2.6 times more likely to self-harm than people serving a life sentence or final sentence.

In 2022, the Commons committee recommended new legislation to allow all IPP prisoners still in prison to be “sentenced”, saying this was “the only way” to address this “unique injustice” to take. However, the recommendation was rejected by the then Minister of Justice Dominic Raabon the grounds that this “could lead to the immediate release of many offenders assessed by the Parole Board as unsafe for release”: the political risk of releasing prisoners who could commit serious crimes is significant. Raab’s successor, Alex Chalk, unveiled a plan that would see the sentences of IPP offenders released for certain periods “terminated” from next month, resulting in the ending of an estimated 1,800 sentences.

The Labor government has also so far rejected the idea of punishing all IPP prisoners, or changing the Parole Board test – apparently due to concerns about releasing dangerous prisoners. In principle, if not in practice, the IPP regime has been rejected. David Blunkett, the Labor home secretary who introduced it, described it as the “biggest regret” of his career. Lord Brown, a former Supreme Court judge, called it a “stain” on British justice. Prisoners, he said, “are being punished for what they might do in the future”, describing this type of “preventive detention” as “alien and hostile to our justice system”.