A UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, recently criticized the United Kingdom Ministry of Justice’s reforms on indefinite Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP), in an interview with The Guardian. While these reforms, expected to release many individuals with perpetual confinement, are seen as a positive step by many, Edwards argues they do not go far enough.
According to Edwards, a significant number of inmates will see no improvements from the changes. The reforms overlook nearly 1,250 prisoners still being detained indefinitely. She refers to these overlooked cases as a “stain” on the entire legal system, as per the justice secretary’s own description. Edwards asserts that this ongoing uncertainty is incompatible with the rule of law and amounts to inhuman treatment.
Edwards has also appealed to members of the House of Lords to amend the proposed Victims and Prisons bill over the coming weeks. She calls for a full resentencing exercise for all IPP prisoners who remain incarcerated.
The UK government first introduced these IPP reforms under the Victims and Prisoners Bill in November 2023. The bill aimed at granting ex-inmates with obsolete indefinite sentences the right to terminate their licence period prematurely. Any IPP offenders serving their sentence in the community would thereby be eligible for review 3 years after their first release. IPP was initially introduced in 2005 to ensure dangerous offenders (whose offenses did not warrant a life sentence) remained incarcerated indefinitely.
Following Edwards’ appeal to the UK government to review IPP sentences in August 2023, the government responded in December 2023 that it would continue to support all those serving the IPP sentence in prison. Their aim was to provide these individuals with opportunities to demonstrate to the Parole Board that they could be safely released.
For more on this subject, see the full report here.