The miscarriage of justice watchdog has sent nine more indeterminate IPP sentences cases to the Court of Appeal. So far 25 IPP cases have been referred this year with more than 250 IPPs (imprisonment for public protection) and DPPs (detention for public protection) under review.

IPPs were introduced by New Labour in 2005 and scrapped in 2012 however that change was not retrospective (for more coverage of IPP scandal on the Justice Gap see here). The nine new referrals concern people convicted between 2005 and 2011, all but one of whom remain in custody despite none being given a minimum tariff of over six years.

These referrals are part of the CCRC’s thematic review of IPPs. In Ritchie’s case, the watchdog considers there to be ‘a real possibility the Court of Appeal will find that the judge made an error in the assessment of Mr Ritchie’s dangerousness and the failure to consider an extended determinate sentence rather than an IPP’. Reviewing the other cases, the CCRC has considered the impact of recent Court of Appeal judgments, in particular R v Williams [2024] EWCA Crim 686 and R v Davis & Others [2026] EWCA Crim 743 and has concluded that ‘in each case there is a real possibility the Court will now find that the sentencing judges did not give sufficient weight to the age and immaturity of each applicant when assessing their dangerousness and future risk’.

The Court has recently overturned several similar IPP/DPP sentences. On 23 April, two referrals were allowed and the sentences quashed, together with those in three other indeterminate sentence cases.
‘These nine referrals bring to 25 the number of IPP and DPP cases that the CCRC has referred to the Court of Appeal so far this year,’ commented CCRC Chair Dame Vera Baird KC. ‘But while 25 referrals are a significant number, this represents only a fraction of the people who remain caught up in this abolished sentencing regime.’

The latest figures show that 856 people who were given IPP sentences have never been released from prison. Around eight in 10 of those who have passed their minimum tariff have already spent at least ten years beyond the point at which the Court originally said they should become eligible to seek release. A further 1,415 people are in custody following recall. ‘These are extraordinary figures for sentences which were abolished more than a decade ago,’ commented Baird.

‘IPP and DPP sentences were intended to protect the public by allowing someone considered dangerous to be detained beyond the minimum period set by the Court, but for many people, the result has been an indeterminate period of imprisonment that has extended far beyond that minimum term,’ she continued. ‘The recent judgments of the Court of Appeal have opened an important avenue for people whose sentences may have been imposed without sufficient consideration being given to their age and maturity and the assessment of future risk. Our task is to identify cases where those developments in the law may make a difference.’

But Baird said that there was ‘no simple solution to the legacy of IPP and DPP sentences’. ‘Public protection must remain paramount, but so too must fairness and the principle that people should not remain imprisoned indefinitely because of a sentencing regime that has already caused so much damage and which Parliament abolished more than a decade ago.’ She said that the Government ‘may well consider it necessary for wholesale action by bringing in new legislation’.

The cases

• Abdiwali Hassan, convicted in 2011 and sentenced aged 19 to an IPP with a tariff of three years
• Carl Lamb, convicted in 2006 and sentenced aged 26 to an IPP with a tariff of 21 months
• Ben Nye, convicted in 2007 and sentenced aged 21 to an IPP with a tariff of three years
• Scott Prince, convicted in 2008 and sentenced aged 19 to an IPP with a tariff of three years and six months
• Liam Osborne, convicted in 2006 and sentenced aged 21 to an IPP with a tariff of two years and three months
• Jerome Barrett, convicted in 2005 and sentenced aged 19 to a DPP with a tariff of two years
• Victoria Hathaway, convicted in 2009 and sentenced aged 19 to a DYPP with a tariff of six years (varied on appeal to four years)
• Shaun Lloyd, convicted in 2005 and sentenced aged 18 to a DYPP with a tariff of two years and nine months
• Jason Ritchie, convicted in 2008 and sentenced aged 38 to an IPP with a tariff of three years