Leading lawyers have called on the government to immediately review all remaining imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences, warning that people may still be detained under unlawfully imposed sentences.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister, Justice Secretary and Parole Board dated September 4, solicitors Dean Kingham and John Turner and barrister Felicity Gerry KC called for urgent action rather than waiting for promised legislation to end the IPP regime. The intervention follows the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Haycock v R, which quashed Niki Dean Haycock’s IPP sentence nearly 20 years after it was unlawfully imposed.

The court identified a ‘clear and urgent need’ for a system to identify people serving IPP or detention for public protection (DPP) sentences which may not have been lawfully imposed.

The lawyers called for a systematic review of every remaining IPP and DPP sentence, including those of prisoners who have never appealed, alongside a presumption in favour of release and consideration of conditional pardons or another mechanism allowing sentences to be reduced to time served. They warned that identifying such cases ‘cannot reasonably be left to individual prisoners, their families or solicitors to discover by chance’. They also urged the Parole Board to prioritise IPP cases and review cases awaiting oral hearings to determine whether prisoners could be released without further delay.

The letter comes amid mounting pressure over the continuing IPP crisis. UN human rights experts renewed calls this summer for the government to resentence remaining prisoners, warning that the prolonged uncertainty and psychological deterioration associated with the sentences ‘may amount to psychological torture’.

The Justice Gap reported earlier this week that the government has pledged legislation to end IPP sentences before the end of this parliament. But the lawyers said the issue ‘cannot wait until the end of this Parliament’. The letter also raised concerns about pressure on the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, to identify potentially unlawful IPP sentences.

The watchdog has been reviewing more than 180 IPP and DPP cases. The Court of Appeal said in Haycock, however, that the CCRC cannot itself provide a solution for every prisoner who has never appealed.