Imprisonment for Public Protection: a stain on our criminal justice system.
2 days ago
5 min read
The prisoners still serving sentences which were abolished in 2012
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the BBC that people convicted of unlawful killing, including manslaughter, would be excluded from the government’s forthcoming changes to prison release arrangements. He also said the government would create additional prison capacity by deporting foreign prisoners and by ending the injustice caused by Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences. The Conservatives have warned that the plan could result in dangerous prisoners being released. Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy told the BBC that people still in prison under IPP sentences were there because independent assessments had concluded they were not safe to release.
This raises a difficult question. What should happen to people who are still in prison under a sentence Parliament abolished 14 years ago?
IPP sentences were created by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and first used in 2005. They were intended for offenders considered dangerous who did not merit a life sentence. A judge set a minimum term, or tariff, reflecting the punishment for the offence. After the tariff expired, the prisoner could only be released if the Parole Board was satisfied that continued detention was no longer necessary for public protection. The system was used much more widely than originally intended. Some prisoners received very short tariffs but remained subject to an indefinite sentence. Parliament abolished IPP sentences from 4 December 2012, but the change was not retrospective. People who had already received an IPP therefore remained subject to it.
The consequences can be seen in individual cases.
Thomas White received an IPP sentence with a two-year tariff in 2012 after a robbery involving a mobile phone. He developed paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis during his imprisonment and, in 2024, set himself alight in his cell. After a prolonged campaign by his family, he was eventually transferred to a specialist mental-health hospital in 2025. He remains subject to the IPP sentence.
James Lawrence received an eight-month tariff in 2006 after threatening someone with a starting pistol. By September 2024 he had spent almost 18 years in custody.
Leroy Douglas received an IPP sentence after stealing a mobile phone in Cardiff in 2005. He spent about 20 years in custody and was transferred between prisons 36 times. On 30 August 2026, he was granted parole. His case was also among those considered by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which concluded that the continued detention of the surviving applicants in the case was arbitrary and unlawful under international law.
Abdullahi Suleman has spent about 20 years in custody following an IPP sentence imposed after a laptop robbery. His case was also included in the UN proceedings.
Wayne Williams has spent more than 19 years in custody after receiving an IPP tariff of less than two years. His case was among those considered by the UN Working Group.
Scott Rider received a 23-month minimum tariff in 2005. He was still in prison 17½ years later when he died by suicide in June 2022. The coroner described his treatment as “inhumane and indefensible” and warned that further deaths could occur without a review of IPP prisoners.
The number of people still affected by IPP has fallen substantially, but the problem has not disappeared. As of 30 June 2026, there were 856 unreleased IPP prisoners in England and Wales. A further 1,415 people serving IPP sentences were in custody following recall. That means 2,271 IPP prisoners were in prison altogether. Among unreleased IPP prisoners who had already served their minimum tariff, around eight in ten had been held for at least ten years beyond the end of that tariff.
The figures also need to be put in context. IPP prisoners in custody are not all in exactly the same position. Some have never been released and are waiting for a Parole Board decision. Others were previously released but have since been recalled to prison. The reasons for recall vary and can include breaches of licence conditions as well as further offending.
The European Court of Human Rights examined the operation of the IPP system in James, Wells and Lee v United Kingdom. It found that the continued detention of the applicants after their tariffs, combined with delays in providing access to rehabilitative courses, breached Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court held that detention based on continuing risk could not be separated entirely from the state’s obligation to provide a realistic opportunity for prisoners to address that risk. The case remains relevant because rehabilitation and risk reduction are central to the IPP system. The Parole Board’s current guidance continues to stress public protection, while also recognising that many IPP prisoners are now significantly beyond their tariffs. It says panels should consider carefully the effect of prolonged post-tariff detention when assessing risk.
There has also been international criticism. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture has raised concerns about the treatment of people serving IPP sentences, while the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has recently found the continued detention of five individuals in the cases before it to be arbitrary and unlawful. Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, a former Supreme Court justice, described the continuing consequences of IPP as “the greatest single stain on our criminal justice system”.
The government’s position has now changed. On 30 August 2026, it said it would bring the injustice of IPP sentences to an end during the current Parliament. The announcement did not, however, set out a complete resentencing scheme or say that every person currently serving an IPP would automatically be released. This, in the face of a prison-capacity issue. The prison population was 85,858 at the end of June 2026, while useable operational capacity was 89,120.
The government is already using earlier deportation of foreign national offenders as one way of reducing pressure on prisons. In September 2025, the Early Removal Scheme was expanded so eligible foreign national offenders could be removed up to four years before their earliest custodial release point, provided they had served at least 30% of the requisite custodial period. But IPP prisoners cannot simply be placed into the same early-release system. The existing Early Removal Scheme applies to determinate sentences; prisoners serving IPP or other indeterminate sentences are subject to different rules.
The government therefore faces two separate questions. One is how to keep enough prison places available for people who need to be detained. The other is how to resolve the cases of people still serving a form of sentence that Parliament abolished in 2012. Those questions overlap because IPP prisoners occupy prison places, but they require different answers. The government’s task now is to find a lawful way of resolving the remaining IPP cases while protecting the public. A resentencing process is one possible answer. It would allow individual cases to be reconsidered rather than treating the original IPP decision as permanent. The Justice Committee has previously recommended a comprehensive resentencing exercise, and the proposal has received support from senior figures in the criminal justice system.
Whatever mechanism is chosen, the cases cannot be dealt with simply by applying the ordinary early-release rules to IPP prisoners. The sentence itself is the problem. Parliament abolished it in 2012. The question now is how to deal fairly with the people who were left behind.
This article represents the personal perspective of Imran Khan KC and was first published on Substack. You can read the original article here:
