Nearly 100 “dangerous” prisoners went on to rape, kill, and commit other serious offences after release according to a new Government report.
A new Ministry of Justice (MoJ) report on offenders serving imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences said “high-risk” criminals were more likely to be recalled to jail than other prisoners under supervision by the probation service.
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Andy Burnham is proposing legislation to scrap IPP sentences to free up “hundreds” of prison places as part of his early release scheme.
The Prime Minister, on his first day facing Parliament, told MPs he was “grasping the nettle” on IPP sentences.
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Mr Burnham said Parliament had ignored IPP “too long” and “which to this day keeps people behind bars, despite already having served more than their sentences”.
There are currently 2,271 men and women serving IPP sentences, which have been used to lock up offenders indefinitely if considered to pose a threat to society. Most are issued for violent and sexual crimes, the Telegraph first reported.
Some 97 freed IPP prisoners in the years between 2014-15 and 2030-24 committed serious further offences – listed as including murder, manslaughter, rape, sexual assaults, kidnapping, arson and aggravated burglary.
And there were eight murders between 2010 and 2018 committed by prisoners who had been handed IPP sentences, according to written parliamentary questions by the MoJ.
IPPs were introduced by Labour in 2005 for serious offenders deemed dangerous but did not commit a crime warranting a life sentence.
The system was abolished in 2012 but did not apply retrospectively, leaving thousands of prisoners stuck in prison indefinitely.
Some 1,415 IPP prisoners had to be recalled to prison after release.
The remaining 856 have determined to be too high risk by the Parole Board to be freed.
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Freed prisoners who went on to kill again include David Taylor, who murdered two people after being released in 2013 six years ago.
He had been handed an IPP sentence for aggravated burglary and possessing an offensive weapon.
He claimed to have studied humanistic psychology and was freed – but in 2022 murdered his girlfriend, whose body was never found.
While in custody he attempted to murder a Greater Manchester Police detective investigating his girlfriend’s death and then murdered Kyle Bevan, a convicted child killer, in HMP Wakefield in June this year.
He has now been granted a whole life order, meaning he will never be freed.
Addressing the Commons, Nick Timothy, Shadow Justice Secretary, slammed the decision to free those given the sentence as a “fag-packet policy written to get them out of this crisis”.
Alex Norris had earlier said the early release of prisoners was “part of business as usual” for the Labour Party.
Mr Timothy told the Commons: “Describing the early release of criminals, a dangerous and irresponsible policy, as ‘business as usual’ is not just an insult to victims, but a dereliction of duty.”
Alex Norris, responding, admitted there was “no easy solution” to the prison crisis and urged his Tory counterpart to “engage in a process to bring that to its resolution”.
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