IPP: no resentencing mechanism for the 2,400 people still imprisoned on an abolished sentence
Imprisonment for Public Protection was abolished in 2012 but not retrospectively. Over 2,400 people remain in prison on IPP sentences; 1,012 had never been released as of 31 March 2025, many held years or decades past short tariffs. The Justice Committee recommended a resentencing exercise in 2022; successive governments refused, including the current one (ministers Dakin and Timpson, while calling IPP 'a stain on our justice system'). The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 and Sentencing Act 2026 shortened licence periods, helping those already released, not the unreleased. Lord Woodley's private member's bill requiring resentencing within 24 months reached Lords committee in July 2025 without government support. In January 2026 the UN special rapporteur on torture urged judicial reconsideration of all IPP sentences. UNGRIPP, the Prison Reform Trust and the Howard League campaign, but only legislation can resentence.
This is the UK's largest ongoing acknowledged injustice: people imprisoned indefinitely under a sentence Parliament abolished fourteen years ago, with self-harm and suicide rates far above average. Licence tweaks cannot help the never-released. Each year without a mechanism, more IPP prisoners die in custody than are steadily released.
A statutory resentencing exercise designed by an expert committee (the Justice Committee's 2022 model), phased to start with never-released post-tariff prisoners, with judicial discretion to impose determinate equivalents plus enhanced supervision, deliverable as amendments to the next criminal justice bill or the Woodley bill given government time.
// State-led: Instrument: resentencing legislation; Woodley bill given government time or amendments to the next criminal justice bill.
thousands remain imprisoned indefinitely on a sentence abolished fourteen years ago, dying in custody, while only legislation can resentence and a live private member's bill lacks government backing.