Pressure Mounts for Reform of IPP and DPP Sentences

The intervention follows recent UN findings and a Court of Appeal judgment highlighting the urgent need to address prisoners who remain detained under abolished IPP and DPP sentencing regimes.

Dr Felicity Gerry KC has co-signed an open letter to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Justice and the Parole Board, renewing pressure for urgent action on Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) and Detention for Public Protection (DPP) sentences, building directly on her own report to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and the Rapporteur’s subsequent findings against the UK Government.

The open letter, dated 4 September 2026, was sent by Dean Kingham and John Turner of Nicholls and Nicholls Solicitors. Addressed to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice, and copied to the CEO of the Parole Board, it warns that the Government’s commitment to resolve the IPP injustice “by the end of this Parliament” cannot be reconciled with the urgency of two recent developments.

First, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found the continued post-tariff detention of five IPP petitioners to be without legal basis under international law, while the Government still owes a formal response to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture over the “inhumane/degrading treatment” experienced by IPP prisoners. Second, the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Haycock v R [2026] EWCA Crim 1105 recognised a “clear and urgent need” for a system capable of identifying prisoners unlawfully held under IPP or DPP sentences who have never appealed.

The letter sets out five measures for immediate adoption: a proactive government-led audit of all remaining IPP/DPP sentences; a conditional pardon or equivalent statutory mechanism to reduce sentences to time served; an experienced practitioner review team applying a clear presumption in favour of release; a distinct, expedited priority category within the Parole Board’s existing IPP Taskforce; and urgent review of all IPP cases currently awaiting an oral hearing, so release is not delayed where it is already justified on the existing evidence.

The intervention builds directly on Dr Gerry’s own submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, filed in February 2026 on behalf of eight IPP prisoners who had, on average, served 516 per cent of their original tariff. That report documented a “dystopian” system amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, fed into the Special Rapporteur’s escalating correspondence with the UK Government.

In her most recent communication of 24 June 2026, Dr Alice Jill Edwards reiterated “in pressing terms” her concern that IPP sentences have become forms of “psychological torture and/or other psychologically cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment,” noting that of the 946 people still serving IPP sentences, 99.6 per cent remain in custody beyond tariff and 73 per cent have already served ten years or more over tariff. She renewed her call for a full, or at minimum partial, re-sentencing exercise for all remaining IPP prisoners.

Dr Gerry, instructed pro bono throughout by Dean Kingham on behalf of over 90 people affected by IPP sentencing, continues to press the case that indefinite detention under a scheme abolished more than a decade ago remains one of the most pressing human rights issues in the UK criminal justice system and that domestic and international findings now leave the Government with no credible basis for further delay.

A copy of the open letter can be downloaded here.

You can also read more in The Independent and in Libertas Chambers’ previous update on the UN application filed on behalf of eight IPP prisoners.