source: Inside Time

published: 27 March 2025

Image Credit: Jimmy Chan at Pexels.com

Four more prisoners serving Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences have taken their own lives, taking the total number to 94. Another 37 released IPPs took their own lives in the five years to April 2024, according to Government figures, as many struggle with the strict licence conditions.

On 9 February 2024 a prisoner serving an IPP sentence died at HMP Warren Hill in Suffolk. Another self-inflicted death took place at high-security HMP Frankland in Durham the following month. On 29 June, a man under an IPP sentence died at HMP Swaleside, and a fourth self-inflicted death was recorded on 29 October at HMP Wymott. Nine took their own lives in 2023, the highest annual total on record.

The architect of the sentence, David Blunkett, described the latest loss of life as a “terrible tragedy” which should focus minds on action to help IPP prisoners. He admits he regrets introducing the open-ended jail terms when he was home secretary in 2005. They were abolished in 2012 due to human rights concerns, but not retrospectively, leaving thousands without release dates, including for minor crimes, until the Parole Board says they are safe for release.

Successive governments have refused to re-sentence IPP prisoners, despite calls from the all-party Justice Select Committee UN special rapporteur on torture, amid high rates of suicide and self-harm. Labour peer Lord Woodley, whose private member’s bill for IPP prisoners to be re-sentenced will not succeed without government support, said: “Ministers accept the importance of resolving the IPP scandal but there is still a lack of bravery and common decency, with the government refusing to consider a re-sentencing exercise – widely seen as the only effective way to resolve this industrial-scale miscarriage of justice.”

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