Campaigners against Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences have cautiously welcomed a Government review.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced on 4 August that he had told Alex Norris, the recently appointed Justice Secretary, to review IPP. The review forms part of his examination of ‘earned release’ under the Sentencing Act (2026). Mr Norris has himself challenged IPP in a Parliamentary question in the past.
An abolished sentence
The then Labour Government introduced IPP in 2005. It allowed judges to add an indefinite sentence to one that fitted the crime. Each prisoner received a minimum tariff but stayed in jail until the Parole Board judged them safe to release.
Prisoners often found that test impossible to meet. The sentence ended in 2012, but the change did not apply retrospectively. Everyone already serving IPP stayed on it.
Families and reform groups have campaigned against the sentence ever since. Nearly 100 people serving IPP have died by suicide in custody. Licence conditions after release were strict, and people faced recall for matters as minor as missed appointments.
More than 2,200 people are now in custody on IPP sentences. Over 800 of them have never been released. More than 99 per cent of that group are past their tariff dates, and 80 per cent are at least 10 years beyond it.
The other 1,400 have been released and then recalled. Of those, 81 per cent went back to prison without having reoffended. A recalled IPP prisoner spends an average of 26 months back in custody.
Past calls for reform
In 2022 the House of Commons Justice Committee carried out a major review of the sentence. It concluded that IPP should end and proposed resentencing.
In 2025 a working group set up by the Howard League for Penal Reform, led by former Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, made its own proposals. It called for everyone on IPP to receive a fixed date for leaving prison, with support arranged in the community.
The governments of the day rejected both sets of recommendations. Successive governments have argued that their reforms were working. These include licence changes that make it easier to end released prisoners’ licences, and an IPP Action Plan to help prisoners progress towards release.
The United Nations Committee on Human Rights recently described IPP as a form of psychological torture. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has also referred IPP cases to the Court of Appeal. In recent decisions, the court has changed sentences to remove the indefinite element.
Shirley Debono of IPP Committee in Action said that perhaps “finally the blight on British Justice will be ended”. Stacey Clough of The Injustice of IPP said: “I hope and pray this comes to something.”
The campaign group UNGRIPP said it welcomed the review but would judge it on results. Without a fair and independent route to resentencing, it said, the review would be just another chapter in a long story. “The people still trapped in an abolished sentence do not need another promise to examine the problem. They need a fair route out of it,” the group said.
