| answer text |
<p>On 16 October 2023, the Lord Chancellor announced he would be looking at options
to curtail the licence period to restore greater proportionality to IPP sentences
in line with recommendation 8 of the report by the Justice Select Committee (JSC),
published on 28 September 2022.</p><p>These changes are being taken forward in the
Victims and Prisoners Bill. The measures will make it quicker and easier to terminate
an IPP licence (and therefore the IPP sentence as a whole) whilst balancing public
protection considerations.</p><p>The new measure will:</p><ol><li>Reduce the qualifying
period which triggers the duty of the Secretary of State to refer an IPP licence to
the Parole Board for termination from ten years to three years;</li><li>Include a
clear statutory presumption that the IPP licence will be terminated by the Parole
Board at the end of the three-year qualifying period;</li><li>Introduce a provision
that will automatically terminate the IPP licence two years after the three-year qualifying
period, in cases where the Parole Board has not terminated the licence; and</li><li>Introduce
a power to amend the qualifying period by Statutory Instrument.</li></ol><p> </p><p>The
Lord Chancellor was persuaded by the Committee’s recommendation to reduce the qualifying
licence period from 10 years to 5 years and is going further: reducing the period
to 3 years. These amendments will restore greater proportionality to IPP sentences
and provide a clear pathway to a definitive end to the licence and, therefore, the
sentence.</p><p>In addition to these changes, the actions this Government are taking
are working; the number of prisoners serving the IPP sentence who have never been
released now stands at 1,269 as of September 2023, down from more than 6000 in 2012.</p><p>
</p><p><strong>Table 1: The tariff-expired Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP)
prisoner population at least 10 years over tariff, 30 September 2023.</strong></p><table><tbody><tr><td><p>Time
over tariff</p></td><td><p>Count</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From 10 years to less than
11 years</p></td><td><p>132</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From 11 years to less than 12
years</p></td><td><p>117</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From 12 years to less than 13 years</p></td><td><p>128</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From
13 years to less than 14 years</p></td><td><p>128</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From 14
years to less than 15 years</p></td><td><p>94</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From 15 years
to less than 16 years</p></td><td><p>62</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From 16 years to less
than 17 years</p></td><td><p>21</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From 17 years to less than
18 years</p></td><td><p>1</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>From 18 years to less than 19 years</p></td><td><p>1</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>Total</p></td><td><p>684</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Please
note:</p><p>(1) The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT
systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors
with data entry and processing.</p>
|
|
