Leaving prisoners in limbo creates a cruel death row

Two years ago, MPs warned the government that a “unique injustice” in our criminal justice system – people trapped in jail for years after receiving indeterminate sentences – was causing higher levels of self-harm and suicide than among other prisoners. Regrettably, ministers rejected the justice select committee’s central proposal to review all the cases of prisoners serving Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences with a minimum but no maximum term.

IPP sentences, created in 2003, were abolished in 2012 on human rights grounds but not for those already serving them. This has left 2,796 prisoners still in limbo today, serving longer sentences than they were originally given. Some 1,179 of them have never been released, 705 of whom are more than 10 years beyond their original sentence. The MPs rightly described this system as “irredeemably flawed”.

Today The Independent reveals another worrying case that underlines the committee’s stark warning. A coroner has criticised the “inhumane and indefensible” treatment of Scott Rider, who took his own life in prison in 2022 after serving 17 years – 15 years more than his original 23-month tariff for grievous bodily harm. Tom Osborne, the coroner, warned that further lives could be lost if action is not taken.

Not surprisingly, Mr Rider had given up hope of release – a common thread running through similar deaths among those serving IPP sentences. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, who investigated 54 self-inflicted deaths of prisoners serving IPP sentences between 2007 and 2018, said self-harm and suicide risk often stemmed from the uncertainty inherent in the sentence. With release conditional on parole, there is no way for a prisoner to know when they will be freed – or if they ever will be.

The Prison Reform Trust previously reported that for every 1,000 prisoners serving an IPP sentence, there were 550 incidents of self-harm, compared with 324 among those serving a determinate sentence and more than twice the rate of those serving a life sentence. In 2019, the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody found the self-harm rate among female IPP prisoners was at least double that of other women in prison

and over 10 times the national average for the female population as a whole.

There is strong evidence that hopelessness and despair mean many IPP prisoners suffer mental health problems, creating a Kafkaesque vicious circle where their mental state becomes a “risk factor” and barrier to their release when their cases are eventually heard by an under-resourced Parole Board – sometimes after years on a waiting list. The board should be given the resources needed to prioritise such cases.

Although the aim of IPP sentences was the rehabilitation of dangerous offenders, in many cases they have done more harm than good. David Blunkett, the Labour peer who introduced them as home secretary, is now trying to put right something he admits he “had a hand in getting wrong”. He identifies one flaw as the failure to provide the necessary therapies and courses to help IPP prisoners on a journey back into society.

Indeed, the treatment of those handed IPP sentences is completely at odds with the principle of giving all prisoners the chance of redemption and rehabilitation. Holding such people for years on end needlessly adds to the cost – with an estimated £1bn bill since the sentences were officially abolished – and space pressures on jails which are bursting at the seams. Overcrowding is such a serious problem that even a Conservative government has scrambled together a scheme to release low-level offenders 60 days early.

It is welcome that the government has accepted some changes to improve the progression, release and licence termination of people on IPP sentences. But these moves will not provide much help to those who have never been released.

The Independent is calling for an urgent review of the sentences of all IPP prisoners before more of them take their own lives on a modern-day death row in a country where capital punishment has long been abolished. These sentences are a stain on our criminal justice system.

If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you

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