Given the overcrowding crisis in Britain’s prisons and the fact that the criminal justice system is teetering on the brink of collapse, it is doubly troubling that there are still around 2,400 people in prison under the discredited system of imprisonment for public protection (IPP).
There is good reason to believe that at least some of these men and women, many of them incarcerated long ago for relatively minor offences, could be released or let out on licence with no risk to the public. Instead, they remain in captivity, serving literally indefinite sentences, with some harshly punished even for minor breaches of their parole conditions.
