"The Parole Board shall not give a direction under subsection (5) above with respect to a life prisoner to whom this section applies unless – (a) the Secretary of State has referred the prisoner's case to the Board: (b) the Board is satisfied that it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that the prisoner should be confined."
"A life prisoner to whom this section applies may require the Secretary of State to refer his case to the Parole Board at any time – (a) after he has served the relevant part of his sentence…" (a) the Secretary of State has referred the prisoner's case to the Board: (b) the Board is satisfied that it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that the prisoner should be confined." "
"The court shall… order that the provisions of s.28(5) to (8) of [the 1997 Act] … shall apply to the offender as soon as he has served the part of his sentence which is specified in the order."
"The part of his sentence shall be such as the court considers appropriate taking into account – (a) the seriousness of the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it… " "
"Any court dealing with an offender in respect of his offence must have regard to the following purposes of sentencing – (a) the punishment of offenders, (b) the reduction of crime (including its reduction by deterrence), (c) the reform and rehabilitation of offenders, (d) the protection of the public, (e) the making of reparation by offenders to persons affected by their offences."
“The Prison Service has withdrawn the enhanced thinking skills programme for reasons of economy. This meant that there were no programmes for prisoners who are likely to spend a significant part of their sentence at Doncaster. This was particularly important for those who had received the new Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection (ISPP). For these prisoners, who often have short tariff dates, the absence of any opportunity to address offending behaviour inevitably meant that they risked a longer time in custody.”
"that the need to ensure a proper allocation of resources across the prison estate has meant that a number of those serving IPP sentences have not had as full an opportunity to progress within the system as had been hoped."
“The current reliance on the lifer management arrangements for dealing with all IPP prisoners has failed. IPPs are stacking in local prisons and are not moving to establishments where their needs can be assessed or better met.”
“1. IPPs are dealt with through the lifer system: they spend time in local prisons until space is found at a first stage life centre; intensive assessment is conducted at the first stage lifer centre; IPPs are then transferred on within the training estate for further interventions. 2. The reliance on a small number of specialised lifer centres creates a bottleneck. This prevents timely access to interventions necessary to reduce risk in some cases. Over 2500 ISPs (of which 1500 are IPPs) are currently being held in local prisons since space in lifer centres is simply unavailable and turnover is slow.”
“The current state of the Life estate is such that transfer to a first stage establishment is nowhere in sight. Although Mr Walker’s custodial behaviour may justify transfer to open conditions or release, the fact that he has not as yet had his sentence plan or undertaken any work around relapse prevention would to my mind stand in the way of this. Until the relevant assessments have been done and work undertaken, I cannot recommend him for release or for transfer to open conditions.”
“the massive influx of IPPs along with other sentenced lifers from our courts has inflated our lifer/IPP numbers to 160 (and increasing) against a profiled maximum of 131. This increase above our profiles numbers, without any additional resources, has meant that we have not been able to accept anyone from our first stage waiting list for almost a year.”
“The increase in Lifer/IPP numbers and the fact that most of these individuals have come to us with short tariffs means that we now seem to do mostly report writing and are largely unable to get on with our “real” job of risk assessment and sentence planning work.”
“A full assessment will only be done at the Sentence Planning stage, at his First Stage Lifer Centre, and the suggestion is that he is likely to need to undertake CALM and PASRO courses prior to release in order to ensure that his risk is reduced to an acceptable level. He professes himself happy to do these….As Mr James has not as yet had his Sentence Plan or undertaken any work related to his offending, I cannot with any confidence recommend him for release or for transfer to open conditions.”
“Whether or not the prisoner ceases to present a danger cannot be a neutral consideration, in statute or policy. If it were, we would forego any claim to a rational and humane (and efficient) prison regime. Thus the existence of measures to allow and encourage the IPP prisoner to progress is as inherent in the justification of his continued detention as are the Parole Board reviews themselves; and without them that detention falls to be condemned as unlawful as surely as if there were no such reviews”
“Discretionary life sentences are imposed for the very reason that the sentencing court cannot be satisfied that the prisoner will no longer be a danger when the tariff part of his sentence ends. (Post-R v Offen[2001] 1 WLR 253 , that is substantially true too in the case of automatic life sentences). That being their rationale, it seems to me impossible to suggest that at the tariff expiry date there ceases to be ‘a sufficient causal connection between the conviction and the deprivation of liberty’: Weeks’s case 10 EHRR 293, 308, para 42. There is no question of the ‘decision not to release on that date’ being ‘inconsistent with the objectives of the sentencing court’ so as to the transform the detention into ‘a deprivation of liberty that was arbitrary’: Weeks’s case. At Para 49. True, para 49 contemplates that the required causal link might ‘eventually’ be broken. To my mind, however, that would be so only in very exceptional cases. Mere delay in article 5(4) proceedings, even after the tariff expiry date, would not in my judgment break the causal link.”
“61. In so far as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms has a role to play in this appeal, it is article 5(4) which is relevant and not article 5(1). Article 5(1) is not relevant because the justification for the detention of a prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment (whether discretionary or automatic or mandatory) is that sentence and not the fixing of the tariff period. ”
“The stark consequence is that IPP prisoners, or at least a very high proportion of them, at present have no realistic chance of making objective progress, with the assistance of appropriate initiatives, within prison, towards a real reduction or even elimination of their risk factor by the time that the tariff expires.”
“…when sentence is passed it is not to be presumed against the prisoner that he will still be dangerous after his tariff expires, let alone months or years later. He may or may not be. Whether he is or not, and therefore whether his continuing incarceration is justified or not, can only be determined by reference to up-to-date (at the very least reasonably up-to-date) information enabling the decision-maker, the Parole Board, to form a view of the question of risk in his case. To the extent that the prisoner remains incarcerated after tariff expiry without any current and effective assessment of the danger he does or does not pose, his detention cannot be justified…”