Prisoners
(asked on 14th November 2023) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people sentenced to Detention for Public Protection are currently over their tariff and remain in prison having never been released by (1) original tariff length, and (2) time over tariff.
On 16 October 2023, the Lord Chancellor announced he would be looking at options to curtail the licence period to restore greater proportionality to IPP sentences in line with recommendation 8 of the report by the Justice Select Committee (JSC), published on 28 September 2022.
These changes are being taken forward in the Victims and Prisoners Bill. The measure will make it quicker and easier to terminate the IPP licence (and therefore the IPP sentence as a whole) whilst balancing public protection considerations.
The new measure will:
- Reduce the qualifying period which triggers the duty of the Secretary of State to refer an IPP licence to the Parole Board for termination from ten years to three years;
- Include a clear statutory presumption that the IPP licence will be terminated by the Parole Board at the end of the three-year qualifying period;
- Introduce a provision that will automatically terminate the IPP licence two years after the three-year qualifying period, in cases where the Parole Board has not terminated the licence; and
- Introduce a power to amend the qualifying period by Statutory Instrument.
The Lord Chancellor was persuaded by the Committee’s recommendation to reduce the qualifying licence period from 10 years to 5 years and is going further: reducing the period to 3 years. These amendments will restore greater proportionality to IPP sentences and provide a clear pathway to a definitive end to the licence and, therefore, the sentence, while balancing public protection considerations.
In addition to these changes, the actions this Government are taking are working; the number of prisoners serving the IPP sentence who have never been released now stands at 1,269 as of September 2023, down from more than 6000 in 2012.
Table 1: Number of people sentenced to DPP that were (1) in prison having never been released, (2) in prison having been recalled, in each of the most recent four quarters of available data.
| 31 Dec 2022 | 31 Mar 2023 | 30 Jun 2023 | 30 Sep 2023 |
(1) in prison having never been released | 41 | 36 | 37 | 36 |
(2) in prison having been recalled | 43 | 42 | 44 | 49 |
Table 2: (3) the number of people sentenced to DPP that were in the community on licence, in each of the most recent four quarters of available data.
| 30 Sep 2022 | 31 Dec 2022 | 31 Mar 2023 | 30 Jun 2023 |
(3) in the community on licence | 99 | 102 | 101 | 99 |
Table 3: Tariff-expired unreleased DPP prisoner population by original tariff length and time over tariff, 30 September 2023.
Time over tariff | Original Tariff length | Total | ||
Less than 2 years | 2 years to less than or equal to 4 years | Greater than 4 years to less than or equal to 6 years | ||
Less than 5 years | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
From 5 years to less than 6 years | 0 | 0 | * | * |
From 6 years to less than 7 years | 0 | 0 | * | * |
From 7 years to less than 8 years | 0 | * | * | 4 |
From 8 years to less than 9 years | 0 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
From 9 years to less than 10 years | 0 | 0 | * | * |
From 10 years to less than 11 years | * | * | * | 5 |
From 11 years to less than 12 years | * | * | * | 5 |
From 12 years to less than 13 years | 0 | * | * | 4 |
From 13 years to less than 14 years | 0 | 0 | * | * |
From 14 years to less than 15 years | * | * | 0 | * |
15 years or more | * | * | 0 | 6 |
Total | 9 | 13 | 14 | 36 |
Please note:
(1) The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
(2) An asterisk (*) has been used to suppress values of one or two. This is to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Further disclosure control may be completed where this alone is not sufficient.
Table 4: Number of people serving a DPP sentence that were recalled to prison, in each year since 2010.
Recall Year | Number of Recalls |
2010 | 1 |
2011 | 6 |
2012 | 4 |
2013 | 13 |
2014 | 9 |
2015 | 5 |
2016 | 16 |
2017 | 18 |
2018 | 22 |
2019 | 16 |
2020 | 20 |
2021 | 21 |
2022 | 14 |
2023 | 13* |
Please note:
(1) The table gives the number of recalls and not the number of individuals recalled in each year. Recording of unique IDs has not been complete throughout these years, so we are unable to give an accurate count of unique individuals recalled from 2010
(2) Processed data are available from 2010.
(*) Figures for 2023 are for the first two quarters only.