Two years ago, a former supreme court justice described the imprisonment for public protection (IPP) scheme, introduced in 2005 for offenders deemed to be a risk to the public, as “the greatest single stain on our criminal justice system”. As a new report published by the House of Commons justice committee makes damningly clear, its iniquitous legacy still blights the lives of thousands of prisoners in England and Wales.
Originally intended to target very serious offenders, IPPs were scrapped 10 years ago after being issued far more widely and inconsistently than anticipated. Close to 9,000 prisoners were warehoused indefinitely by the state, many without due cause, and plunged into the mental torment of a “never-ending” sentence, with no conventional path to release. Lord Blunkett, the Labour home secretary who introduced the scheme, has since acknowledged the disastrous consequences of the policy for prisoners.
