Campaigners have expressed ‘relief’ as parliament passed legislation allowing rights for prisoners serving ‘public protection’ or IPP sentences after a redaction of support from the Labour Party raised concerns around the Victims and Prisoners Bill.
The legislation, which was passed on May 14, has ended what has been dubbed a ‘scandal’ by Richard Garside, Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. Initially thought to be ‘controversial’ critics accused the bill of being ‘hijacked’ by Dominic Raab after additional clauses included giving Mr Raab the power to veto prisoner releases and alter parole boards.
Thomas White, who stole a mobile phone in 2012 and given a minimum two-year sentence, has still not been released. White was allowed to his 14-year-old son Kayden last month for the first time since his incarceration after the support of Lord Blunkett. Another prisoner, Aaron Graham, who was given a two and a half year sentence for punching someone whilst protecting a friend during a fight in 2005, is one of the UK’s longest serving IPP prisoners who has had a 20-year stretch behind bars for his crime.
The Victims and Prisoners Bill seeks to provide a minimum standard of treatment for prisoners and improve national scrutiny of prisons, probation, police, and the courts.
Claire Waxman, victims’ commissioner for London, claimed last year that the Victims and Prisoners Bill had been “hijacked by Dominic Raab” to increase government powers, at the cost of its primary goals of ensuring protection for victims. However, other campaigners have conveyed disappointment that the changes will ‘not impact all IPPs’ and have called for ‘resentencing as the only measure to truly fix’ the issue.
Richard Garside said: “It’s a huge relief that members of parliament pulled their collective fingers out to get this legislation across the line. If parliament had failed to pass these small but important reforms, the impact on those serving IPPs, whether in prison or the community, would have been devastating.
“Ending the scandal of the IPP once and for all is, at heart, a simple task. The outgoing government threw up unnecessary barriers, and threw out spurious arguments, from the get-go. Any concession they made was grudging, mean-spirited and tone deaf.
“The battle to end the IPP sentence for good continues. I hope new government shows the imagination and seriousness of purpose, so lacking over recent years, and finished the job.”
Donna Mooney, Member of campaigning organisation, UNGRIPP: “Today a number of IPP amendments were passed in the Commons that were included in the Victims and Prisoners Bill.
“While we are extremely grateful that these amendments have been passed, they will sadly not impact everyone who is serving an IPP. We have always pushed for resentencing as the only way to truly fix IPP, and we will continue to do this with the new government.”
The new bill aims to make reforms to the parole system to “help protect the public, keep the streets safe and restore confidence in the parole system”. The measures in the bill will strengthen the release test, require parole boards to include those with a law enforcement background, allow for greater ministerial oversight and the power to overturn release decisions for the most serious offenders, reform the role of the Chair of the Parole Board to ensure it is a strategic leadership role that has no influence over the decisions made in individual cases by parole panels.
Serious offenders will have tougher restrictions, and will be subject to a whole life order from being able to marry or form a civil partnership while in prison, subject to an exemption in exceptional circumstances.
IPP was introduced by the New Labour Government in 2003, as part of the Criminal Justice Act, originally intended to protect the public from dangerous offenders whose crimes did not merit a life sentence. IPP offenders at that time were given indeterminate sentences with a minimum term to serve, after which they could be considered for release by the parole board. However, IPP was said to be ‘overused and handed out to almost ten times the expected number, many of whom were guilty of minor crimes’.
The sentence was ‘abolished’ in 2012, but this change was not made retrospective, and all existing IPPs were at that time still subject to their sentence. Due to the difficulty for IPP prisoners to satisfy terms to be released and notoriously overbearing recall conditions, the high number of these IPP prisoners in prison has remained.
Recorded figures have shown that 2,796 public protection inmates have remained in prison as of December last year- 705 of whom are a decade or more years past their original terms.
