Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for which offences prisoners serving imprisonment for public protection sentences were convicted on the most recent date for which figures are available.

The indeterminate sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) was abolished in late 2012, but not retrospectively. It is for the independent Parole Board to determine whether a prisoner serving an IPP should be released once he has completed the minimum custodial period set by the Court for the purposes of retribution and deterrence – commonly known as the “tariff”. Under the statutory release test, the Parole Board may direct the release of an IPP prisoner only if it is satisfied that it is no longer necessary on the grounds of public protection for the prisoner to be detained in custody. It is right that IPP prisoners should remain in custody until it is safe for them to be released.

The table shows the number of IPP prisoners, by offence group, at 30 June 2015. Although IPPs were only available for offences with a maximum penalty of at least 10 years, this table does associate IPP prisoners with offences carrying a lesser maximum, including some summary only. This is down to errors in data collection: the relevant cases are likely to be those where the offender was sentenced for multiple offences, but not associated in the Ministry of Justice database with the most serious offence they committed. Work is underway to improve data quality in relation to IPPs.