Number of offenders with indefinite sentences recalled to prison soars

There are 2,909 IPP prisoners, more than half of whom have been recalled to custody, often without being charged for another offence. Photograph: Andrew Aitchison/Corbis/Getty Images

The number of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) offenders who have been recalled to jail despite not being charged with a further offence has soared in recent years, accounting for almost three-quarters of returns last year.

Under the widely discredited England and Wales scheme, which was abolished in 2012 but not retrospectively, offenders were given a frequently low minimum jail tariff but no maximum one, and were released on indefinite licence, meaning they can be recalled at any point.