Call to re-sentence 3,000 prisoners trapped under indefinite jail terms Inmates in England and Wales still held under ‘imprisonment for public protection’ scheme scrapped 10 years ago

10 comments

  1. Obviously the “hang ‘em and flog ‘em” crew will hate this, but seriously, locking people up indefinitely for minor crimes is not a good look.

  2. It should only depend on whether they are still a threat to the public.

    Public protection must come first.

  4. Nah these sentences are absolutely amazing from a societal standpoint.

    These are people who murdered someone or raped a dozen kids, you didn’t get this for having 2g of weed on you. And this sentence means that if you are given a second chance and talk your way through the parole board and then immediately go out and rape another kid, you get sent straight back to do a life sentence. Not like the current system where you get a 3 day recall for every child.

    And if the parole board then wants to give you a fifteenth chance they can. But any time you commit an offence you go back.

    I have not met a single person on IPP who was not an evil person. You had to do seriously bad things to get one. And remember – you only go back to prison when you commit further crimes. They’re complaining they’re being punished… for further crimes they commit.

  6. If someone has found themselves sentenced to an indefinite term, I’m guessing it was for a very serious offence. Given how offenders tend to commit more serious offences over time it’s safe to assume the majority should probably never be released for public safety, unless some serious error was made at sentencing.

    According to a MOJ report:

    *Summary*

    *Adult prisoners in the sample had long offending*

    *histories,* ***The majority of the prisoners***

    ***had been in prison previously****, and less than one in*

    *20 (4%) had no previous recorded conviction or*

    *caution.*

    *The patterns of offending history* ***indicated a***

    ***escalation of seriousness of offending*** *and related*

    *disposals.* ***Two-thirds of prisoners in***

    ***the sample had re-offended within two years of***

    ***release from prison.***

    *These results show that prisoners tend to have long*

    *and complicated criminal histories, and that*

    ***offenders reaching prison with no previous***

    ***convictions are in the minority.***

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/219801/proven-re-offending-after-release.pdf

  7. Sounds like another potential spillover from our lack of mental health services and institutions. I’m not against the prisoners being reassessed as long as it’s not a case of releasing them into the public by default due to the mental healthcare resources.

  8. I worked with a guy in an offenders hostel who was on one of these. Absolutely crazy. He’d been in prison from age 16 to 23 for what was basically a fight (in his words, but basically assault and battery). He had to attend probation weekly despite having a job and it interfering with it because all his apt. were midday. Any little slip up and they’d send him back to prison. All this and it was coming up to a decade since he’d offended.

    I’m all for hard time when necessary but this was disproportionate.

    Edit: the reason he was in prison for so long as he kept having fights early in his sentence, then settled down in his twenties.

  9. ITT people gleefully defending IPP sentences who clearly know literally nothing about what they were or who they were given to.

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