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Newsnight: Chairman of Parole Board says there is a "case for review" of IPPs
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The Chairman of the Parole Board, Sir Duncan Nichol, has said there is a case for a review of the legislation for Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection because they are not working as they should.
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Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs) are life sentences – with no fixed release date – introduced under the Criminal Justice Act for the most dangerous criminals in Britain. Anyone being sentenced to an IPP has to demonstrate that they are no longer a danger to society before they can be released.
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A report to be broadcast tonight on Newsnight at 10.30pm on 91Èȱ¬ Two shows there is a growing body of evidence that they are being used for those found guilty of relatively minor offences, exacerbating prison overcrowding.
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Sir Duncan is asked if the legislation should be reviewed.
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He says: "I think there is certainly a case for a review of the legislation as there is a case for looking at the resources in the prison estate for coping with the prisoners who are already there ... because it's not working as it should. We can see that. Short tariff prisoners are coming to us without having had the opportunity to persuade us they're not dangerous."
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Asked if this is unfair he replies: "It is a problem which needs to be corrected, it needs to be addressed."
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The Chief Inspector of Prisons Ann Owers, who has been critical of IPPs in the past, tells Newsnight: "I would like to see a custodial impact assessment that says what is this going to do to people in prison, is this what we planned? Is this what we thought was going to happen. How do we afford it, how do we resource it? How do we plan for it?"
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She adds: "It does call into question are these really the dangerous risky prisoners that we should be focusing on. An indeterminate sentence for public protection is a very expensive bit of kit.
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"It requires prisons to do a lot with the person while they're there and it will require the probation service to supervise them for at least ten years when they're out. So we need to make sure we're targeting the right people.
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"That didn't happen at the point of legislation but it still had not happened nearly two years later when these people were actually being sentenced by the courts. There was no plan about how the prison system – already overcrowded, already under stress – was going to deal with them."
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The report reveals that there are 145 new IPPs each month and that 3,000 people have been sentenced to life under an IPP in just two years – more than three times the Government's forecast. On current trends there will be 12,500 lifers on IPP sentences by 2011.
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Around a third of all IPP sentences are for robbery, not for offences like murder and rape which dominated life sentences before the Act. Newsnight has learned that half of all IPP tariffs – that's the minimum time prisoners must serve – are under 20 months.
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Andy Hall, QC, Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, adds: "This is a piece of legislation which has had very serious unintended consequences. It is catching such a broad category of offenders that the Government really has to look again at the whole issue of risk sentencing and imprisonment."
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