Almost one in five of the 1,549 prisoners serving uninterrupted indefinite sentences in England and Wales have now spent 15 years behind bars, openDemocracy can reveal.
The revelation will add to pressure on the incoming justice secretary to deal with the legacy of the now discredited ‘Imprisonment for Public Protection’ (IPP) sentence, which was abolished in 2012 but left thousands still serving jail terms with no end date. The job is tipped to go to former Northern Ireland chief Brandon Lewis if Liz Truss wins leadership of the Tory Party today as expected.
In 2020, there were just two people who had served 15 years of an “uninterrupted” IPP sentence, with that figure rising to 71 last year. But as of 31 March this year, that had risen steeply to 281 (18% of the 1,549 total). Some 1,103 people (71%) have been inside for a decade, Ministry of Justice data shows.
