The inherent injustice and inhumanity of IPPs

By Brian Barder / @brianlb

Many things are badly wrong with our prisons policies: chronic over-crowding of ageing prisons, too many on short-term sentences with no time for rehabilitation, leading to high re-offending rates. But another little-noticed scandal is the system of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection, oddly abbreviated to IPPs. Literally thousands of people are indefinitely incarcerated, sometimes for years after serving the punishment part of their sentences, but still kept in jail because they can’t prove that they won’t re-offend.

Last week I wrote this letter to the Guardian (which published a heavily edited version of it on 22 June):

Polly Toynbee is right to point to the obscene waste of public money involved in short-term prison sentences which achieve nothing (Forget being tough, it’s time to get realistic on crime, Comment & debate, 22 June). She might also have mentioned the folly, waste and injustice of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs), which currently add massively to shameful overcrowding in our prisons. They waste public money on a vast scale by keeping in prison thousands of people who have served their sentences imposed for punishment, rehabilitation and deterrence but who can’t prove to a Parole Board that they won’t reoffend if released, often because there are no places for them on the behaviour courses which they need to attend as a virtual condition for release.

These people are in preventive detention, being punished for future offences they haven’t committed, often with no hope of release, fearing that they are in prison for life, having already been punished for often quite minor offences. The onus is on them to prove a negative about the future, which is conceptually impossible as well as reversing the normal onus of proof. The proportion of IPPers so far released is minuscule. Justice Department ministers of the new government have acknowledged that the system is unacceptable: Crispin Blunt [, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice,] told parliament on 15 June that “We have 6,000 IPP prisoners, well over 2,500 of whom have exceeded their tariff point. Many cannot get on courses because our prisons are wholly overcrowded and unable to address offending behaviour. That is not a defensible position.“

It’s inhumane, unjust and a monumental waste of taxpayers’ money. All parties should now insist that the system is swept away and those IPPers who have served their minimum sentences should be released forthwith, either unconditionally or on licence. Here’s a useful cut in government spending that will benefit everyone.

IPPs are a New Labour invention that has failed. A welcome policy of the new government is its promise to review the voluminous crime, terrorism and prison legislation inherited from New Labour and in need of enlightened reform. A review of sentencing policy, one ingredient of this, is due to report by October. This offers a unique opportunity to get rid of IPPs for good. They inflict misery and fear on thousands of people who have paid the penalty for offending but now live in deadly fear that they will never be released. They inflict misery and fear on the families of those indefinitely incarcerated in preventive detention, not as punishment for offences they have committed and for which they have been punished, but because some men in suits are afraid that they may do it again if they agree to let them out. Perversely, the onus is on them to prove that they won’t reoffend: but how can they prove a negative about the future?

Three years ago I posted an article on my own blog trying to expose the injustice and indefensibility of IPPs. That article prompted 150 ‘comments’, many from relatives of IPP prisoners, expressing vividly and painfully their anguish and despair at the fate which has overtaken those they love, however flawed. Those comments have become a forum for IPP relatives to exchange their experiences, fears, hopes, and ideas about ways in which the system might be reformed. The forum now continues in comments on a new blog post in which I appeal to everyone, of whatever political persuasion, to write urgently to their MPs asking them to use their influence with Ken Clarke, the new Justice Secretary, or his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Crispin Blunt (whose enlightened comments on IPPs I quoted in my letter to the Guardian – see above), to make sure that IPPs are within the remit of the review of sentencing policy promised by the new government: and to ensure that the outcome of the review will be to sweep away the whole IPP system, with all IPP prisoners who have served their tariffs (‘minimum sentences’) released unconditionally (or on licence) forthwith.

I would like to hope that LabourList readers, whatever their politics, will press their MPs (in their own words but perhaps quoting this) to approach Justice Department ministers accordingly. Conservative MPs may be most readily persuaded of the need to scrap IPPs by pointing to the horrific cost to the taxpayers – us — of keeping in prison, year after year, thousands of people who shouldn’t be there. Ending IPPs and releasing IPP prisoners at the end of their tariffs might well make the costly programme of new prison building unnecessary, a handy contribution to deficit reduction on which this government is (in my view irrationally) fixated. Labour, old-style LibDem and other MPs may be more impressed by arguments about the inherent injustice and inhumanity of IPPs: the needless suffering and wrecking of people’s lives that they entail: the morally and intellectually dishonourable practice of locking people up for future offences that they haven’t committed and are in most cases no more likely to commit, if they are released, than the next man in the supermarket queue. Above all, it’s essential that Labour in parliament should not yield to the temptation to oppose abolition of this indefensible system just because it was introduced, unaccountably, by a Labour government.

Please write to your MP about this, and please don’t leave it until too late.