‘Good progress’ made for prisoners

THE JUSTICE Secretary has insisted that officials are making “good progress” in their efforts to process the cases of thousands of prisoners left in limbo by indefinite jail sentences. Earlier this year, The Yorkshire

Post revealed that more than 300 inmates in Yorkshire prisons are serving imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences despite the fact they were abolished in 2012.

Under these orders, offenders are required to satisfy the Parole Board that they no longer pose a threat before they can be released. But there are concerns about a backlog in processing their cases, with figures revealing that more than 200 prisoners in Yorkshire have already overstayed their minimum tariff.

The Parole Board has previously stated that it plans to release the majority of IPP prisoners – or “have clear plans in place that will enable them to progress” – by the end of the year. Asked whether he was confident that this target would be met, Justice Secretary David Lidington stressed that the board was “making very good progress” and the Government remains committed to getting IPP numbers down.

“We gave Nick Hardwick and the Parole Board additional resources so that they could accelerate the pace at which they were reviewing IPP cases,” he said.

“A record number of IPPs were released in the last 12 months... Numbers are down now to about 3,000, we will get them down lower. The really tricky challenge... is how we deal with people who persistently fail to satisfy the Parole Board that they could be released without a serious risk to public safety.”