Given some of the clearly stated priorities of the government, which include keeping the public finances on a sound footing, reluctantly making cuts to the welfare benefits and foreign aid budgets to bolster defence in the light of international security threats, and bringing the UK into compliance with United Nations rulings (the agreement to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius), it seems perverse that it has failed to address an area of state spending that would tick all three of these boxes at once.
Add in the fact that, since last autumn, it has been implementing an emergency early release scheme to free up space in the country’s prisons, and it is even less comprehensible why ministers have not moved to end the continuing scandal of prisoners left languishing on what are called imprisonment for public protection (IPP) jail terms, which set no date for their release. Not only has the government not moved to any formal consideration of their plight – these prisoners are explicitly excluded from the early release scheme – but it has given scant sign of any serious interest in doing so.
Like its predecessors, this government has resisted calls to provide for the re-sentencing of the prisoners concerned, despite censure from the UN special rapporteur on torture. Nor has it earmarked any funds for the so-called IPP action plan, which is intended to help prepare these prisoners for release.
Yet the status of these prisoners is one that should not be tolerated in any law-governed state. Several thousand people are being held under legislation passed in 2005, when the then Labour government was responding to public concern about crime levels. The law permitting such sentences was repealed by the coalition government seven years later, but without retrospective effect. The result is that some 2,600 people remain incarcerated under a law that was judged unjust and inhumane and no longer applies.
We now have a situation where some prisoners are released after serving less than half their time, in order to reduce prison overcrowding, while others serving sentences for far lesser crimes still have no prospect of release. Among them are individuals whose only convictions are for thefts of mobile phones and laptops. That is not to say that such crimes, especially if committed repeatedly or with violence, should not be punished, including by jail time. But it defies justice that the time actually served by as many as 700 of these prisoners is now 10 years longer than the minimum term, and that some have served double the standard tariff for the particular offence.
The grounds given are that public safety is paramount and that the prisoners concerned have failed tests to show that they would be safe on release. But, as campaigners and families also argue, at least some of the reasons why they are considered unsafe may reflect the time they have spent in prison and the uncertainty that inevitably attends a sentence with no defined end.
The human costs here are incalculable. The cost to the Exchequer, on the other hand – and that means to all UK taxpayers – is all too calculable. As we reveal today, the total cost last year in respect of the 2,600 IPP inmates reached £145m. This comes on top of a bill estimated at £1.6bn for keeping IPP prisoners in the first 10 financial years after the law was repealed. This is a shocking sum in itself, given the current appeals to save money. But it is doubly so, since it was spent applying a type of sentence that was abolished as unjust and inhumane.
It cannot be beyond the wit of ministers to grasp that several of the government’s priorities militate for changing this, and fast. Humanitarian, judicial and financial considerations all point in the same direction, with the bonus that several thousand prison places can potentially be freed up as well.
Yes, some extra funds may have to be directed to preparing long-confined and damaged prisoners for release and providing the support they may subsequently need. But this would be far less in the longer term than underwriting many more years in prison. Of all recent prime ministers, Sir Keir Starmer, with his past professional life as a human rights lawyer, must understand better than most that this is the right thing to do, for the sake of justice above all, but also for the sake of the public purse.
