In September 2021 the House of Commons Justice Committee launched an Inquiry into the continuing legacy of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentencing law. The report of that Inquiry was published in September 2022. JOHN BOWDEN reports.
Although the IPP sentence was abolished in 2012, this was not retrospective. As a consequence, 2,926 prisoners sentenced under IPP law remain in prison: 1,492 of them have never been released and 1,434 have been recalled to custody, often for minor breaches of parole licence conditions. The blatant injustice of the imprisonment of people under a law that no longer exists and its impact on a prison system already bursting at the seams has forced the political establishment to recommend ending the legacy of the IPP, even within the current increasingly reactionary political climate.
IPPs were introduced in 2003 by Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett under a Tony Blair government which swore to be ‘tough on crime’ and under which there was a massive expansion in the prison population. Blunkett claimed that the IPP would only be used against the most ‘serious violent and sex repeat offenders’, when in fact it was frequently used against petty ‘repeat offenders’. The Justice Committee report states: ‘Consequently, there are 231 IPP prisoners who received sentences with tariffs [minimum terms] of less than two years and 606 prisoners who received sentences with tariffs of two to four years who have never been released. In other words, a large number of the IPP prisoner population are serving what amounts to a life sentence for what are widely regarded as lower-level offences such as robbery, theft offences, criminal damage, arson and public order offences.’
Effectively, the Labour government replaced the supposed independence of judges and courts with the executive power of the state. As a result, an increasing population of life sentence prisoners began to fill the prisons, adding to what was already the highest population of lifers in the whole of Europe.
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment, including IPPs, are given a judicial recommendation by the courts as to the minimum period or tariff they should spend in prison. However, many remain imprisoned long beyond the expiry of that period, because their subsequent fate is decided, not by the court, but by the Parole Board, which is heavily influenced by changes in the political climate.
The Justice Committee was given copious evidence of the psychological damage inflicted on IPP prisoners by their continued imprisonment without hope of release. The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody wrote that ‘IPP prisoners have repeatedly been identified as at a higher risk of suicide or self-harm than those in the general prison population’. In 2016, the Prison Reform Trust reported that for every 1,000 prisoners serving an IPP sentence, there were 550 incidents of self-harm. The rate of self-harm amongst women serving an IPP sentence was at least double that of other women in prison and over ten times the national average within the general female population.
The Association of Prison Lawyers told the Committee that ‘Such people have lost hope and their behaviour has declined to the point that probation will not support release’. Doughty Street barristers’ chambers further explained that: ‘The Parole Board takes into account all of the prisoner’s behaviour whilst in prison. Any disciplinary or behavioural problems, even those that can be described as low-level, seem to result in release being refused […] Mental health difficulties, either pre-occurring or occurring as a result of lengthy incarceration, also affect a prisoner’s ability to move through the system and show a reduction in risk. Continued detention under the uncertainty of IPP sentences is often counter-productive and creates a cycle of progress and disruption.’
The Parole Board always conflates deteriorating mental health with increased risk to society, and IPP prisoners are therefore denied release because of mental health problems directly caused by their indefinite detention. This vicious cycle was acknowledged in 2011 by then Secretary of State for Justice Ken Clarke, who announced the ConDem Coalition’s intention to abolish the IPP, saying ‘The Parole Board has been given the task of trying to see whether a prisoner could prove that he is no longer a risk to the public. It is almost impossible for the prisoner to prove that, so it is something of a lottery and hardly any are released. We therefore face an impossible problem.’
Faced with an overwhelming mountain of evidence about the tortuous trap of the IPP sentence, the Justice Committee readily accepted that the government needs to take urgent action. The report makes a series of recommendations, foremost of which is that everyone sentenced to an IPP who is currently in prison or on licence should be referred back to the courts and resentenced to an appropriate length determinate sentence. This vindicates all those inside and outside prison who have long agitated and campaigned for such recognition. However, such reports are not binding on the government, and so far there is no indication it will take any action.
The final ending of the IPP and the release of all IPP prisoners would be a significant victory, although the continuing expansion of the prison system and a prison population which is on course to reach 100,000 in the next few years, shows that incarceration remains the prime state weapon against an increasingly impoverished working class.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 291 December 2022/January 2023
