IPP prisoners are trapped in a “never-ending carousel of excessive punishment” which amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, a major report submitted to the United Nations warns.
The 44-page submission to the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Dr Alice Gill Edwards, calls for the immediate abolition of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence for those still languishing on the indefinite jail terms, with compensation, or an urgent review of their cases.
The damning assessment by leading international lawyer, Dr Felicity Gerry KC, highlights the plight of eight prisoners – including Thomas White, who has served almost 14 years for robbing a mobile phone and set himself alight after his mental health deteriorated in prison.
Dr Gerry has urged the torture tsar to conclude these eight individuals are being subjected to degrading treatment, in violation of their human rights. On average, they have each served 516 per cent of their original minimum term.
“Risk to the public has long been cited as a reason for keeping IPP prisoners incarcerated but this lacks any sound foundation, especially when harm is being caused by the very system that sentenced those people in the first place,” the report found.
“The UK cannot hypocritically stand against despotic regimes when its own systems are so dystopian.”
The open-ended punishments, which have been linked to almost 100 suicides in prison, were scrapped in 2012, but not retrospectively, leaving thousands trapped without a release date.
Once freed, many find themselves in a vicious cycle of recall, in which they can be hauled back to prison indefinitely for minor breaches of strict licence conditions.
The architect of the flawed sentence, David Blunkett, has since admitted that ushering in the draconian punishments under Tony Blair’s Labour government is his “biggest regret”.
Almost 2,400 were still languishing on IPP sentences in December 2025, including 924 who have never been released. The majority have served at least 10 years longer than their original minimum term.
In 2022, the cross-party justice committee inquiry found the sentences were “irredeemably flawed” and called for all IPP prisoners to be resentenced, but successive governments have refused.
The application, filed last week, is the second major a submission to the UN over the jail terms. A separate complaint over five other IPP prisoners is already being investigated by the UN’s working group on arbitrary detention.
Any finding of degrading treatment or arbitrary detention would be a damning indictment of the Ministry of Justice’s handling of the scandal.
Dr Gerry, of Libertas Chambers, has been instructed to review dossiers for over 90 IPP prisoners by prison lawyer Dean Kingham, of Reece Thomas Watson solicitors.
In her UN submission, she argues the prolonged uncertainty of the jail term causes “acute and enduring psychological suffering that far exceeds legitimate punishment aims”.
In many cases, this suffering means it is impossible for prisoners to meet the Parole Board’s test for release.
She found prisoners are in a “systemic bind” in which their progress is hampered by a court-imposed assessment of their “dangerousness”, which the Parole Board has no power to revisit or remove.
“The Parole Board system was simply not designed for IPP sentences, and this has led to excessive punishment,” she concluded.
The report found all eight prisoners, half of which are neurodiverse, had found it difficult or impossible to access prison courses to help them work towards release.
This is coupled with histories of trauma, violence, childhood deprivation, institutional abuse and existing or previously undiagnosed mental health conditions.
Sadly, the most vulnerable IPP prisoners are the least likely to be released, she found.
Mental health experts warned Mr White, who was recently transferred to a secure hospital following years of campaigning from his family, “would never be released from prison because he would never receive appropriate and necessary treatment in a custodial setting”.
The report concluded: “This report demonstrates that IPP sentences are cruel, inhuman and degrading because their indeterminacy causes acute and enduring psychological suffering that far exceeds legitimate punishment aims.
“The absence of review, limited appeal processes, uncertainty of release, repeated parole refusals and recall powers generate fear, anguish and a sense of hopelessness, intense mental suffering and gross humiliation.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “It is right that IPP sentences were abolished, and we have already taken action to support these offenders to move on with their lives. This includes additional support for IPP prisoners and changing the law to ensure those serving these sentences in the community can be more swiftly considered for licence termination.
“Since April 2023, the never‑released IPP population has fallen by 30%, and all but a handful of those remaining IPP prisoners have repeatedly been found by the independent Parole Board to be too dangerous to live in the community.”
