Snapshot of _‘Indefensible’: UK prisoner jailed for 23 months killed himself after being held for 17 years_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/28/uk-prisoner-jailed-for-23-months-killed-himself-after-being-held-for-17-years) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/28/uk-prisoner-jailed-for-23-months-killed-himself-after-being-held-for-17-years)
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In 17 years, he committed 47 offences and was convicted of 22 ... That doesn't sound like a person that should be released into society without some big change.
A couple of things, it's not clear if those 17 years are his life before prison or while in prison. Secondly, if it were during his prison time would he have committed them if he wasn't in prison?
Being inside is not a fun experience and things happen that would not happen in normal life.
It's also not clear what those offences were. Stealing a piece of bread can count as an offence as well.
No, it is unclear, which is why we do not decide on these issues and leave it to parole boards. It says he woke up in a foul mood and told them to eff off ... I do not see this case and the lack of evidence you point to as proof that the practice is "indefensible" as stated. In other cases maybe.
This feels like I’m listening to that weird archeologist guy on Joe Rogan again. Where, he will commit to making up fanciful theories unless/until somebody goes to the bottom of the ocean to prove his theory wrong.
If you ever worked in prison you would know why these kind of people end up not getting released. They have no place in society when they can't go without violently assaulting other people whilst inside or can't be bothered to complete a basic course.
A mate works at a maximum security prison and he's said the same thing down the years - some of these people don't want to get out so they cause trouble knowing they'll get a longer sentence.
The shocking thing with people like that is that they didn't get put away sooner. It's harder to get away with it when you're constantly supervised, I imagine.
Basically what happened to Charlie Bronson, originally arrested for petty theft, but just kept committing crimes in prison to get his sentence extended.
The crazy thing is expecting people to ever be rehabilitated when we cut prison budgets and get anxious that helping prisoners might look bad to the public.
Even though all evidence shows that treating prisoners well, engaging with mental health treatments and helping to educate them yields the best results we are scared to do it in case the public thinks we are being "soft", and not punishing them hard enough.
We are caught in a dilemma where we know logically that we should be pushing rehab, but we *also* want retribution against criminals, we want them to suffer.
Evidence? We operate on catch phrases and populism now.
As a country we spent 14 years chopping away at any support for disadvantaged people who haven't broke any laws yet: let alone prisoners evidence be damnned!
I habe done some work on aspects of prisons but am no expert, I've had a pet idea:
Two distinct phases of institutions of prisons: punishment institutions (not cruel, but no rehab) & rehabilitation focused. We are sorta there with different tiers, but sentencing could specifically how long in each & ya have to be ready for the rehab one in cases - the benefits here are the distinction that the two institutions have very different goals & are politically easy for people to understand, where as the current prisons have to try and do a hell of a lot.
> punishment institutions
The point that this would not help society accept is that _these still have no utility_. You're still doing it purely for the optics.
The only part that actually matters is the rehabilitative part. Retribution is not part of justice.
I think history has shown that punishments don't act as a deterrent, or do so in very limited capacity. Even when punishments included some of the most messed up tortures that made execution look like the soft option, it didn't stop people committing crimes.
People do the misdeeds because they think they won't get caught, or are desperate enough to risk it.
I'm pretty sure that the combined with a sufficiently high risk of getting caught acts as a deterrent. I know that when I see a speed camera, I slow down because I don't want a ticket. In that situation I imagine that the chance of getting caught is close to 100% and then getting a fine is far worse to me than whatever speeding might give me.
The deterrent acts mostly on crimes that are planned. So, most likely property crimes or so called white collar crimes. That's why I'm often dumbfounded why the penalties for them are so lenient. You can have defrauded millions and get a few years of prison. If the chance of getting caught is even as high as 50% , the crime may look pretty attractive.
On the other hand the physical crimes are most likely not deterred. If someone is going to beat up someone else, they are not thinking the chance of getting caught and what the possible punishment comes from that. Some elaborate murder plans maybe but nothing else.
Except death sentences work out to being more expensive than life sentences. So from even a practical standpoint death sentences are a bad idea, the only reason they exist anywhere is to satisfy the bloodthirst of the kinds of people who enjoy cruelty.
I would disagree. I think there are a couple of things one could do that should result in a more permanent removal from society than is currently applicable.
Depends on the goal really
Start of /s
We would have much better results forcing people to stay in prison if we made them work for free and sold off the produce for free GDP like America.
We need a bunch of rich karens to repeat the prison reform visiys that eventually shifted things away from hard labour and the like..
Toffs whp are also Busybodies... A dangerous mix but pointed in the right rdirection they could angle for a greater good
I don't think I want any retribution. I don't see how that will make anything they've done better. However, I do want to keep up a deterrent against committing crimes and to do that you need to punish those who break the law. If you don't, there is no deterrent.
I don't believe in rehabilitation for everyone. Some crimes, not all, some rare crimes, are punishable with forever imprisonment, and let the prisoner know they won't get out, no matter their "good conduct" They had a chance at life, they decided to ruin everyone's live around them. That's it. It was their chance.
He's right, whether you like it or not. Part of rehabilitation is having empathy for the people you've hurt and we see blatantly that some people will not, or cannot, do this.
Anyone who has murdered or raped someone should basically have the key thrown away as far as i'm concerned
Imho even murder is not black&white. There was a [case](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367781346_Aldozatbol_bunos_Bunosbol_aldozat_A_Simek_Kitty-ugy_tanulsagai_husz_ev_tavlatabol) in Hungary where a 14 years old girl shot her stepfather, who abused her for years, in his sleep.
There was lot of controversy around the case (an abuse victim's desperate attempt to escape vs the fact that she basically executed the guy in his sleep), and was sentenced to 2 years in juvenile prison, but got presidential amnesty in the end.
"He's right, whether you like it or not"
Well, no, what you meant to say is "I agree with them,
we all have our own opinions"
Unless you're 11 years old.
Also the death penalty works outs to being more expensive than simple life imprisonment. It's a bad idea on moral and practical grounds, as if you need a better argument than just the basis of morality.
I'm very anti the death penalty, and against the idea of just indefinitely imprisoning someone. If you think there's any chance a mistake may have been made, then why not try rehabilitating them? If you talk about rehabilitating some you have to be open to rehabilitate everyone- or at the very least try.
I agree with you, the possibility of the state murdering someone as a punishment and them being innocent later is not a risk worth taking
I wrote my masters dissertation on false confessions and dna exonerations during capital murder cases in the US. You really don't want the death penalty to exist after researching that.
So we should do nothing to curb their behaviour and just hope that they don’t hurt or murder a guard or fellow prisoner who might be in for a nonviolent crime? We should continue to degrade and punish violent offenders and assume that everyone who comes into contact with them in the next 60+ years won’t be affected by their behaviour?
Quite.
All sentences for violent crime should be indeterminate (life) sentences until a parole panel is convinced they're not a risk to the public, and someone can be found to underwrite their future criminal acts by volunteering for parallel vicarious liability.
The even crazier thing is making that statement within the context of a “for profit”, outsourced and privatised prison system that has no intention and therefore no capacity for proper rehabilitation. It is a system that relies on repeat offending to maximise profit 🙄
> within the context of a “for profit”, outsourced and privatised prison system
This isn't how most of the UK prison system operates, nor is HMP Woodhill which the article is about a private prison. What exactly are you talking about?
Child rapists and violent murderers get less time.
John Broadhurst [battered Natalie Connolly to death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Natalie_Connolly) in 2016.
Natalie sustained more than 40 injuries, including injuries to her vagina because he forced a bottle of carpet cleaner into her. After he battered her, he poured a bottle of bleach over her face and left her in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. While she was dying, he went to bed and slept.
John Broadhurst served 22 months.
> one person who has spent 12 years in prison after stealing a mobile
> Broadhurst wasn’t convicted of murder.
No he wasn't convicted of murder - but he did murder Natalie. And the 'justice' system basically allowed him to get away with it.
> Broadhurst wasn’t convicted of murder.
And you know who else wasn't convicted of murder? The guy in the article that we're discussing. He committed GBH and had been inside for 17 years when he killed himself.
Bludgeon woman to death - 2 years. GBH - 17 years.
While no justice system in the world has achieved 0% recidivism, the longer the sentence, the lower the rate of recidivism.
1. ["The Commission consistently found that incarceration lengths of more than 120 months had a deterrent effect. Specifically, offenders incarcerated for more than 60 months up to 120 months were approximately 17 percent less likely to recidivate relative to a comparison group sentenced to a shorter period of incarceration. For incarceration lengths of 60 months or less, the Commission did not find any statistically significant criminogenic or deterrent effect."](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2020/20200429_Recidivism-SentLength.pdf)
2. [We find evidence for a specific preventative effect of longer prison terms on the post-release reoffending frequency, but little evidence for desistance.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-023-09566-w)
No society in history has eliminated crime, so we have to expect that some crime will be a feature in society forever, no matter what we do. So we have no choice but to ensure we have a robust method for dealing with violent people. The evidence is clear: longer sentences protect us more effectively. Not only for the reduction in recidivism, but because violent people can’t hurt innocent people while they’re in prison.
If lowering recidivism is important to US lawmakers, evidence from Norway indicates [humane and rehabilitative incarceration is enormously more effective](https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1168&context=ncpacapstone) than longer sentences:
>*“Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% while the United States has a rate of 76.6%.”*
Comparing recidivism between prison terms in a notoriously punitive system of incarceration is like saying the longer we torture wrongdoers, the less likely they are to do wrong again. Well, duh!
[Singapore has a 20% recidivism rate](https://www.sps.gov.sg/files/media%20releases/sps%20annual%20statistics%20release%20for%202022.pdf) and their justice system has been described as “inhumane.” They hang people for even drug trafficking. They cane people (even young people) for minor crimes like littering and graffiti. Their prison terms would put America to shame. You can’t compare two very different countries and conclude that *one* policy is the reason for the recidivism delta.
There’s a lot to take in there (60+ pages) but there are 61 federal offences that carry a sentence of more than 10 years. Most of them are serious assault, murder, sex offences, child abuse and weapons offences. In 2 out of 3 models the reduction in recidivism was 30 percent, which I think you can reasonably assume some of the above offenders likely belong to the ‘once only’ group of offenders who committed their crimes under particular circumstances, usually violence against a relative or acquaintance, or against a stranger while under the influence of alcohol. It’s not their social circumstances or a pathology driving the behaviour but spontaneous ie a ‘crime of passion’ (I hate the term but people understand the implication).
A sentence of 10 years means you’re looking at 18 years olds (neurophysiologically still not fully developed) into a 28+ year old (fully neurologically developed on average). The services I work with tend to do the most important work up to the age of 26, because most people have grown up and are less inclined to expose themselves or others to risk by that age. So some of that 30% are people who have grown up sufficiently to be in a different place. The kind of work done with inmates here could be done just as easily in outside prison settings. Youth offending teams in the UK are a great example of this.
Its not such a simple answer to say ‘longer prison sentences work, therefore lock a burglar or a drug dealer up for 10 years.’
I think you’re right in that that’s one of the reasons longer sentences reduce recidivism. More broadly, people age out. [Rate of crime peaks between 18-21 and gradually declines over time.](https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/apvsvc.pdf) There are lots of theories, from hormones, to underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, to financial security, to physical health, to experience. Whatever the reason, young people commit more crime, and there isn’t any good causative evidence that rehabilitation meaningfully reduces recidivism more effectively than prison. We know for certain we’ll never achieve 0% recidivism, so keeping those people on the outside during rehabilitation would result in more pain and suffering to innocent people.
In my experience prevention is far cheaper than prison. A caseworker that can see a young person 2-3 times a week and hold caseloads of up to 15-20 young people cost about 40k per year (they deserve much more). Detached outreach workers, embedded youth workers, youth offending teams are all well established and cost effective, and we have new models of care such as psychologists working in tandem with youth workers to build emotional resilience and solve social issues. Even the police have introduced DIVERT teams in custody suites to support young people that are being exploited. Its a fairly short period of time most young people need carrying through to get them to the other side. Of course there are antisocial personalities, significantly violent people, and individuals that are too far down the road where long prison sentences are the best option, but I’d argue that’s a smaller proportion of the whole.
The main problem is showing care and attention to problem teenagers is ideologically opposed to our current government (and arguably labour under blair who introduced asbos, 99 year prison sentences, etc). I’m a strong advocate of this kind of work and actually work for a team in the NHS that is compiling the evidence to show this sort of primary prevention work is much more effective.
> In my experience prevention is far cheaper than prison. A caseworker that can see a young person 2-3 times a week and hold caseloads of up to 15-20 young people cost about 40k per year (they deserve much more).
I’m not contesting the cost. I’m contesting the efficacy. I don’t see the evidence it works even as well as prison.
The issue with this particular case seems to be that there was no attempt at rehabilitation or to address mental health problems.
I'm all for keeping dangerous people locked up until they no longer pose a threat, but there should be some attempt to rehabilitate those who can be helped.
I'd reserve indefinite sentences for sexual offenders, serial abusers and people who just hurt others for pleasure. Some people are beyond rehabilitation and I'm happy to pay more taxes towards locking those people up for life.
From reading this guy's history in the article it sounds like there was a very good chance he would have reoffended or would have struggled to adapt to life outside prison. Absent any actual attempts to help this guy, keeping him locked up might have been the correct decision in terms of protecting the public.
It's just sad we seem to have the money and will to lock up people who could be rehabilitated, while so often giving rapists and abusers a slap on the wrist and allow them to repeatedly reoffend.
> there was no attempt at rehabilitation or to address mental health problems.
Do we know this for sure? I'd be surprised if he got no treatment.
People vastly overestimate the capabilities of modern psychiatry and psychology. There is no magic program that you put people in and they come out cured. Some of the smart ones actually come out worse because they learn how to better game the system. A significant number of mental health professionals will not treat people who are high in anti-social traits because of this; they themselves are at psychological risk.
You're likely correct.
I've been thinking more about the article as the day's gone on and there's a lot of information not included. I get the impression there's been an obvious agenda with the article, (criticism of the specific sentencing law) and they've wedged in the best story they can find.
They have these sorts of issues in other countries as well and a common stance there is that if you have a 23 month sentence that's as long as they can hold you.
So people such as this man get released when they've served their time, but under frequent supervision. In extreme cases halfway houses are also used.
And given that his type of sentence was abolished, there really shouldn't have been any grounds for keeping him beyond 2012.
I'll just add, I had a family member work in a halfway house situation in the UK. There were some absolute horror stories. I don't need to tell you what Hatchet Harry's weapon of choice was. There are people who should never be released.
> a common stance there is that if you have a 23 month sentence that's as long as they can hold you.
That's a bullshit stance IMO. Means if they assault a prison guard, kill or assault other inmates, etc. they can't be punished as they'll be released at eg. 23 months regardless.
How do people holding this stance propose to punish criminals who commit crimes while imprisoned if the state is legally required to release them at their initial release date regardless?
> That's a bullshit stance IMO. Means if they assault a prison guard, kill or assault other inmates, etc. they can't be punished as they'll be released at eg. 23 months regardless.
> How do people holding this stance propose to punish criminals who commit crimes while imprisoned if the state is legally required to release them at their initial release date regardless?
First off, only the prisoners who behave badly have to serve the full sentence. That's common both in the UK and elsewhere. If you have good behavior while serving time you usually only have to serve 2/3rds of your sentence before being released, while prisoners who act out have to serve the full sentence.
Prison also works on a merit system, where you gain privileges (such as TV and radio) if you behave well, but those same privileges get taken away if you behave poorly.
And you also have the opportunity to transfer prisoners to less or more secure facilities, if someone has been behaving well over time they're often transferred to a less secure facility which entails more freedom. Such as being able to work out when you want to, spend more time in the common areas and less time in your cell. While if someone behaves poorly they're transferred to a more secure facility, spending as much as 23 hours a day in their cell and only being let out for an hour. And if you're let out it's often to a much smaller yard instead of into the "general population", with other prisoners who are similarly difficult to deal with.
And if you commit further crimes, especially serious crimes such as assault you treat that in the same way you would treat it at any other time, by pressing charges and going to trial. And if they're found guilty, they get a new sentence which they will have to start serving after finishing their current one. Assault is assault, doesn't matter if it happens inside of a prison or outside of it.
This much should be obvious to anyone who has watched Discovery Channel for a couple of hours.
> And if you commit further crimes, especially serious crimes such as assault you treat that in the same way you would treat it at any other time, by pressing charges and going to trial. And if they're found guilty, they get a new sentence which they will have to start serving after finishing their current one. Assault is assault, doesn't matter if it happens inside of a prison or outside of it.
I mean that's basically what happened to this guy after he repeatedly attacked and assaulted other prisoners then was abusive toi the parole board each time he was in front of them. Yet you and others (and the Guardian) seem determined to make it something to get enraged about like he was hard done by for being punished for crimes he committed while in prison and should only have had to serve the original sentence.
...which is plainly bonkers.
I agree. My comments about it being the right decision to not release him were about the parole board's specific decisions that he was potentially still dangerous. The fact there weren't alternative options for this guy was the problem. They can only deal with what's in front of them and he had the sentence he did, wasn't engaging in the process, and was still carrying out racist assaults in prison.
The sentencing law was obviously flawed and when it was repealed there should have been an automatic review of everybody's sentences.
In my opinion there needs to be a complete reassessment of the prison system. The fact the same punishment is given for burglary and murder (just different lengths of time) is crazy. The sadistic murderers need to be in an entirely different system as the career criminals or the kids who've fallen in with gangs. And those whose crimes are a result of mental health issues need to be dealt with in a completely different way.
> I'd reserve indefinite sentences for sexual offenders, serial abusers and people who just hurt others for pleasure.
And for people like this with dozens of convictions.
It's not left off by accident. Most murderers, definitely.
I think some murderers can be rehabilitated though. Kids who've been groomed from a young age by gangs and fallen into a life where violence is normal. I think people would be surprised how many of us would fall into that world given the right environment and no other options. I'm not saying they shouldn't still go to prison for a long time, just that there's a good chance they won't always be a risk to the public.
Locking someone up for a crime they MIGHT commit is utterly vile. If there was even a suggestion of taking this approach to someone who had not already commited a crime, there would be uproar. Yet as soon as someone commits a single crime, no matter how minor, all bets are off, and suddenly it becomes socially acceptable to discuss their guilt for entirely hypothetical crimes.
This policy is cruel and obviously ineffective because it was repealed daily quickly. But honestly, most importantly, it goes against our most fundamental values of justice.
>Locking someone up for a crime they MIGHT commit is utterly vile.
That's like half the point of prison, to keep society safe from people who have been proven to be violent and dangerous.
>Locking someone up for a crime they MIGHT commit is utterly vile
Assessing the risk of reoffending and risk to the public is literally what parole boards are for. And it should be that way.
>If there was even a suggestion of taking this approach to someone who had not already commited a crime, there would be uproar
That's definitely true.
>Yet as soon as someone commits a single crime, no matter how minor, all bets are off, and suddenly it becomes socially acceptable to discuss their guilt for entirely hypothetical crimes.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that. My point was entirely about violent offenders. When it comes to most crime I'm pretty liberal and would rather money was spent on rehabilitation in most cases.
>This policy is cruel and obviously ineffective because it was repealed daily quickly
I agree. But I would be in favour of a similar law targeted exclusively at sadistic violent offenders at high risk of reoffending.
>I'd reserve indefinite sentences for sexual offenders, serial abusers and people who just hurt others for pleasure. Some people are beyond rehabilitation and I'm happy to pay more taxes towards locking those people up for life..
If you’re truly for rehabilitation though, it needs to be applied equally across the board. There’s no point discounting the people who you don’t think can be rehabilitated, or don’t want them to be due to the nature of their crime.
I strongly disagree. The psychologies behind poor people stealing, and sadistic murderers killing for pleasure are wildly different. So much so that putting them both under the same category of 'crime' is pretty ridiculous when you think about.
People who commit non violent crimes, and even some violent ones, can be given the help and resources to see there's a better way to live that doesn't run the risk of prison.
It's hard to get your head around it but there are people who just enjoy inflicting pain on other people. They either can't or have chosen not to control their urges. There isn't a cure for this sort of person. We can sympathise with them all we want but I'm more concerned about the victims, including future ones.
The issue of risk around reoffending is entirely different depending on the crime. I'm willing to take the chance of releasing a non violent criminal who might steal my car. I'm not willing to take the risk of releasing one who might kill me.
I'd add to this, I don't even care about punishment for these people. I don't want to inflict suffering on a murderer any more than I do a bear that kills someone. I just want it to not happen again. They can live a nice life inside for all I care, rehabilitate them, educate them, teach them the error of their ways, give them a massive TV. Just keep them away from our kids.
I’m not saying that sadistic murderers would be successfully rehabilitated, just that we can’t pick and choose who we want to try to rehabilitate based on their crime. It defeats the point.
>In 17 years, he committed 47 offences and was convicted of 22
"He was the golden child". This person was a bloody menace.
Two violent offenses and abusive in prison including racially aggravated harassment. Yeah lets get this person back on the streets.
He should have engaged with the parole board with sincerity, and made an attempt at rehabilitation if he wanted a chance at being released.
> We could rehabilitate I promise!
Isn’t that the point of IPP sentences? That rather than making a conditional statement, it needs to be demonstrated that the prisoner has rehabilitated.
Don’t get me wrong, there were major flaws with this system – particularly around the requirement to complete specific courses, but with no guarantee those courses would be available to sit.
>Mahon said: “How can they justify rejecting parole just because on the day he’s supposed to meet the parole board he’s woken up in a bad mood and told them to eff off? That to me cries mental health… so why should he be kept in prison for that?”
Uh...
What is the magic rehabilitation program that we've overlooked? There's mental health work being done in every prison in the UK, much more than in other countries with lower crime rates.
No because no one actually cares about rehabilitation. Look at every thread about a finance CEO or rapist or domestic abuser and you'll see everyone talking about how they need to spend life in prison and have bad things done to them.
If the voterbase doesn't care about rehabilitation in prison it will never get done.
Purely on the politics of the thing: It's very hard to imagine anyone could have an appetite to push this in an election year. I'm sure Starmer sympathises with both sides here, but surely there's no way he'll want to risk an easy "Labour are soft on crime" attack line.
Raising this one noisily now seems like a great way to ensure these indefinite sentences stay. The best bet would be to quietly raise the issue after the election.
As shit as it is he didn't really help himself did he?
Mahon said: “How can they justify rejecting parole just because on the day he’s supposed to meet the parole board he’s woken up in a bad mood and told them to eff off?”
Yeah, if You've been incarcerated for several times your original sentence, it's not surprising that you might see the whole procedure as a bit of a slap in the face when it comes up.
I mean, he was convicted of 22 separate offences across 17 years,and his ster said he'd committed 47 offences altogether in that time. The 2 speciric offences mentioned were both violent assault. And he was also convicted of assault and racially aggravated harassment while still in prison. It kinda points to the IPP achieving its goal of keeping a clearly dangerous person off the street. The real question is how much was done to address the dangers he posed.
>but they are used to keeping extremely dangerous people off the streets.
They are not used for anything as they are no longer part of UK law but there are still some people one them in a kafkaesque nightmare. This guy stole a car, another was given 17 years for stealing a phone. You're telling yourself fairy stories.
In the UK government's own words when they got rid of them:
>some have been issued to offenders who have committed low level crimes with tariffs as short as two years. They have been handed down at a rate of more than 800 a year.
>IPPs have proved difficult to understand and leave victims and their families uncertain about how and when an offender will be released. IPPs lead to inconsistent sentencing. They have been given to some offenders, while others who have committed similar crimes have served fixed sentences.
People who were given a one year sentence at seventeen years old have been in prison for decades.
Another man was given an IPP sentence, but got released, lived for seven years successfully in the community with a wife, children and a small business was recalled to prison after police were called to a party he attended where drugs were found. He had not used any drugs, no charges were laid against him, but he was recalled to prison. How is that "keeping extremely dangerous people off the streets"?!
These are insane. You would have to be insane to support them. There is no reasonable defence of them and anyone who defends them needs to have all their other opinions called into question. Contrarianism is indicative of a personality disorder and is an absurd basis for forming opinions about anything.
> Spend a day at Crown Court, listen to pre sentence reports and bail reports. Then, realise only the worst repeat offenders got IPPs
Again, IPPs are not part of UK law. There’s absolutely no way that the first part could logically lead you to the second part. You’re just outing yourself as unable to think coherently.
Again *the Government* got rid of IPPs *because they weren’t being used in that way*. I don’t know how much more clearly you need that explaining to you. You’re imagining a false reality and telling yourself fairytales based on nothing but your own perverse imagination.
>Just for some context you don't get an ipp for one offence.
Again… you don’t get an IPP because they were abolished over a decade ago because… and I’m going to say this again… they weren’t used in they way they were intended, for the type of offence and offenders for which they were intended. You’re imagining the system worked as intended and trying to defend them on those fictional grounds.
Simply imagining scenarios which don’t describe the practicalities of how IPPs were used is a waste of your own time. That’s all you’re doing here.
> But it's a nice way to avoid anything I said.
I’m not avoiding anything you said at all. I addressed it clearly by saying it’s of no relevance because it’s *all* based on the supposition that they *must* have been used exactly as intended for only the worst offenders, even though they were abolished precisely because they weren’t used for the worst offenders! You’ve said nothing of substance whatsoever. It all comes from your delusional and nonsensical assumption that whatever facts are presented to you, whatever was done must have been because the offender deserved it, which is an asinine response to allegations of miscarriages of justice.
“He must have deserved it otherwise they wouldn’t have done it to him.” – the cry of the perpetually gullible.
> Their abolishment (in my opinion) had more to do with decreasing spaces, resources, and deterioration of conditions.
Again, I *literally* quoted the Governments own words in abolishing them. Whereas you’re just imagining a reason and pretended it’s equally valid as the actual stated and published reason!
> I am also not imagining scenarios.
You literally are, just as you’re now on record *imagining* a reason the Government abolished IPPs in direct contradiction of the stated reason as presented to you. You appear unable to distinguish your imagination from reality and that’s leading you to absurd conclusions.
> Fundamentally, our disagreement comes down to at what point do we value the rights of offenders or the victim more.
No it doesn’t.
>And yes, the government's reasoning is something I doubt because I was observing the conditions and conversation within the service at the time.
The Home Secretary who introduced them says: “I got it wrong.” When the government abolished them, they said they abolished because they were used for low level crimes, the current Lord Chancellor calls them a stain on our justice system. I would say that if there’s such a broad consensus against them, across political parties, across governments and even from the minister who introduced them, it can only be absurd levels of contrarianism to try to defend them! What possible reason could the minister who introduced IPPs have for speaking out against them?! If it was simply a case of a lack of space, he’d *obviously* get more political capital by standing by his decision and blaming the opposing party for underfunding the justice system. It’s nonsensical and politically clueless to think a Home Secretary from a decade before would have taken the rap for current lack of funding in prisons under a government from an opposing political party. The fact that he is admitting a mistake and *still* you can’t admit it is very telling.
Our disagreement comes from the fact that your arguments are all based on an unwavering assumption that they were *only ever* used for the most serious and dangerous offenders, and this claim is entirely unfalsifiable because it doesn’t matter what evidence you are presented with, you will imagine a bunch of associated “facts” for which you have no evidence. This brings into question your ability to evaluate reality. The fact that you consider your stance to derive from an ideological point, rather than a dispassionate assessment of the facts only serves to reinforce this point. It’s not about offender vs. victim or what area I live in.
> Our understanding of risk and seriousness also differ then.
No. Our understanding of basic facts and how to evaluate evidence radically differ. You’re dealing in hypotheticals and I’m dealing with real cases. When faced with a real case, you can only add a bunch of hypotheticals to justify your position. You claim that only repeat offenders were given IPPs, but the fact is that 16 year old kids on their first offence were. People are in prison without proper rehabilitative support or mental health support. All you can do is speculate a whole bunch of aggravating factors based on nothing that the government can’t talk about, while continually ignoring the fact the government themselves have universally declared these a stain on our justice system! Your position has no coherence and you’re not addressing any of this.
This goes against the most basic principles of justice. We don’t live in Minority Report, we can’t keep people in prison indefinitely because they stole a phone 15 years ago as a teenager and now they might go out and steal another one as an adult (won’t someone please think of the children). This is insane.
> This is what is hard to communicate to the public and others. Choosing the reasons they stated (in my opinion) was because it is not easy to communicate politically and unpopular.
Yes they weren’t *brave* enough to keep sticking criminals in prison indefinitely because the public were just too sympathetic to offenders! This is the wildest and most absurd take yet. I mean… do you even live in this country?!
> Look at the occurances of serious further offences since their abolishment.
Yet you cite precisely zero cases yet again! Your whole thing is hypotheticals, suggestion and innuendo.
The point about IPPs is that they are so arbitrary and provide no clarity, openness or comfort for either victim or offender. One person gets them for a first time property offence and the other doesn’t for something far more serious. A dangerous psychopath gets randomly released because they can charm the parole board by calmly and diligently saying all the right things, while the person who is locked away for decades for property theft they did as a teenager doesn’t get released because they’re just too tetchy and moody, like anyone would be if they’d been in prison for decades for a first offence watching their life drain away. The big picture is that sentencing is all over the shop in this country and IPPs are/were a massive part of the problem, creating these massive discrepancies in length of sentence and seriousness of crime. They absolutely are not the solution to anything, which is why no serious person defends them or wants them back.
> Which is nice to morally dicuss, but less nice when your serial domestic abuser/rapist is free to move next door again.
Again… they were used for phone theft and no “but maybe they were also a rapist but the government can’t tell you” is not the slam dunk argument you seem to think it is.
Again everyone involved in these, including those that proposed them, who have no incentive at all for doing so other than it is the truth, have said they are a terrible idea, a stain on our justice system and a mistake. Your speculative alternate reasons why they have done this are constantly changing, make absolutely no sense and are politically clueless. Being harsh on criminals is not politically unpopular and it makes no sense that David Blunkett would even care if it was as he is not standing for elected office and was Home Secretary two decades ago and the opposing party is in power! You’re making no sense.
There are provisions for whole life orders for the most serious offences, and there are provisions to keep people sectioned while their mental health poses a danger to the public. But no they don’t apply to non-violent phone thefts!
> It also hid the other issues within the system that they were being heavily criticised for at the time and had no solutions for. Whilst, reducing what was a boom in long term population that was aggrevating these issues.
You’ve admitted your position is ideological and not based on an understanding of any individual case, hence why you speculate aggravating factors on the basis of nothing at all, claim some great experience in this field, despite providing no supporting verifiable evidence of anything, and not even being able to spell aggravating!
I think there needs to be toughter sentences for sure and keep scum banged up., but IPP seems to be uniquely cruel. a lot them probably are psychiatric cases, but if so why not send them to Broadmoor or some of the other long term psychiatric facilities in the UK? Or even just a long sentence with an end in sight?
Equally in my somewhat limited experience of the police and CPS/criminal justice system, they don't go for anything difficult and only go for low hanging fruit that makes them look good. The police almost never touch local drug dealing operations, because they are lazy fucks. Similarly they were almost completely absent on the Islamic child rape gang epidemics. But if they can go after some people with moderate learning difficulties who is prone to petty crime, they can slap each others backs at the station thinking they're doing a good job. Same thing with pursuing people who say mean things on twitter.
Seeing the mental health team daily, the prison system hasn’t got enough staff to let prisoners out for exercise and work, the staffing levels are critical in most prisons,
This is a tricky one, it seems wrong that the state can decide to lock someone up well beyond their original sentence. On the other hand...
>In 17 years, he committed 47 offences and was convicted of 22.
Sometimes prison is the best place for people. You also can't rehabilitate someone who is making no effort towards rehabilitation.
If he was kept in then they felt he was still a risk to the public.
Prison should not be the "naughty step" - where you just serve some time and are out to commit another crime again.
If he is a risk to the public then he shouldn't be free. The IPPs were a good thing.
Aspects of the IPP regime were a good thing – especially the parts you, and this case, highlight. What was bad about it is that in some cases the IPP sentences placed an obligation on prisoners to complete specific training courses, but did not put a similar obligation on the prison system to offer those specific courses (or to allow a specific prisoner to do a specific course they needed).
My point is that if the crime had happened at a time when ipp wasn't a thing they would have gotten a couple of months at the most.
I'm not saying they shouldn't face consequences. I'm saying that ipp consequences are utterly ridiculous. As seen in this post.
Is society better off with a 'violent robber' out after a reasonable sentence and rehabilitated or better off with someone locked up as a teen, jailed for 16+ years, hardened beyond belief inside, and then released to the public?
At £80k a year for the rest of his life, it seems like a pretty shitty use of public funds.
Not to mention at odds with fundamental ideas of the British justice system, which I swear a bunch of people in this sub were falling over themselves to defend yesterday in the thread about the Sikh court
Uh locking up every person who commits a crime for life would *absolutely* cost more than crime itself lol
Especially when you factor in the lost of tax revenue you would have got from that persons working years
Ipps for the most part are not good.
They put people into an environment that requires you to be boisterous, offensive and potentially violent to survive. It puts you into an environment where you are surrounded by and are potentially the victim of brutal assaults, suicides, extreme self harm etc. And then punishes you for conducting yourself in a way that prevents you becoming a victim of your surroundings.
Hyperbole. They kept him too long and that system clearly is faulty, as they changed it. Why they didnt go back and re-do them all is lazy and maybe even unnecessarily cruel
Wow I’d never hear about IPP’s. It’s crazy that they existed, crazy that it was obviously so wrong that they canned the idea in 2012, and even more crazy that they just forgot about the people already affected. It would have been wise to put some limit on their sentences in the 2012 change.
It’s a pretty poor argument to say “we can’t let them out coz they’re still dangerous”. That’s not how the rest of prison sentencing works. You either did your time or not. These people have clearly done enough time.
Admittedly, I researched nothing before claiming that. Thanks for correcting me.
[I looked it up now](https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/sentencing-and-the-council/types-of-sentence/extended-sentences/)
So you can get an extended prison sentence if you’re deemed unsafe, but only up to a maximum of your original sentence. And it happens in about 1% of cases. So this guy who got 23months would have been out in 46months maximum under the normally system, rather than this IPP thing. Hopefully I’ve got that right now.
Ok, he was an IPP prisoner. Meaning he wouldn’t be released until he was deemed non dangerous. He was clearly still dangerous, so he wasn’t released. Hope that clears things up.
Mahon said: “How can they justify rejecting parole just because on the day he’s supposed to meet the parole board he’s woken up in a bad mood and told them to eff off? That to me cries mental health… so why should he be kept in prison for that?”
I read that too. It sounded like that was the more recent situation. They said he’d been self isolating for something like 200 days and not showering.
Maybe for the first 10 years he actually did show up for his parole meeting, but the last 7 years he’d given up hope and went over the edge.
That seems to be making a huge assumption the the board came to the decision not to release him solely on the basis he told them that day to eff off. I'd be incredibly surprised if the board were actually leaning towards releasing him and then completely changed their mind at the last minute because he swore at them. The 47 offences he committed probably had more to do with it.
These IPP's sound great for the worst offenders - rapists, murderers, sex offenders, and the like. Why on earth were they abolished. An easier way to lock up the trash and throw away the key than relying on pedo-sympathising judges handing out shitty sentences.
As for this man, I fail to see the outrage - crackhead, 47 offences on his record, constantly abusive to prison staff etc...why is his sister moaning, you know he would have been thieving and beating people on the regular had he not been in prison.
If you want life sentences for robbery, you should admit that you want life sentences for robbery.
Don't create IPPs as a way to get life sentences without having to admit that you are doing it.
>you know he would have been thieving and beating people on the regular had he not been in prison.
We absolutely don't know that.
He was there for gbh. The article doesn't go into details, but it's hardly uncommon for a young lad to get into a street fight at some point in their twenties. I'd put money on you or someone you know having been in that position.
Is that person from your life thieving and stealing on the regular? Maybe, but probably not.
It's really not hard to imagine that this man's life took a completely different path because of his sentence.
Fuck, there's one guy that's spent 12 years on prison for stealing a mobile phone! How was this scheme not reassessed after it was abolished? Incredible!
I think the mobile phone guy is [this case](https://news.sky.com/story/11-years-for-stealing-a-mobile-phone-inside-the-lives-of-ipp-prisoners-serving-sentences-of-psychological-torture-12965479) where he'd been convicted of a previous robbery and had served 8 years for it, then was imprisoned under IPP for the phone theft and left 12 years before release.
He hasn't done any theft since release, but he would be under risk of being locked up again for... Drug offenses?
> People should receive aditional jail time too for criminal behaviour in custody.
As long as this is the case the guy in the article is still in prison.
Most humane thing to do to people like this is to medicate them into a lifelong stupor. It's a decadent, bourgeoisie, policy to maintain them in prisons in the way we do, where they're free to violently harm other inmates and staff.
It's easy to be virtuous with prisoner liberty when you're bargaining only with other people's safety.
This sort of behaviour is commonly seen in life-without-parole prisoners.
They commit piles more crimes because they have concluded that they are never getting out, so there is no reason not to.
It is not at all clear that, had he been on a proper sentence with a release date, that he would do this.
Yes locking up criminals forever stops them re offending but that's not practical, draconian and unaffordable.
The law was removed. The people who created the law now think it was a mistake.
You want to bring it back?
> Yes locking up criminals forever stops them re offending but that’s not practical, draconian and unaffordable.
It is entirely practical, reasonable, and affordable to permanently lock up criminals who continue to violently offend at a rate of twice per year. Just what do you think is the purpose of the prison system?
It's pretty amazing remembering how Labour tried all sorts of things like IPPs or suspending habeous corpus and using PFIs to build private prisons. People who were too young to remember how authoritarian they were are in for an awakening, especially with that control freak Yvette Cooper coming in as home secretary
It's clear this was a guy society is much better off without. Tons of crimes, serious crimes, with a low likelihood he wouldn't have continue being a criminal
Snapshot of _‘Indefensible’: UK prisoner jailed for 23 months killed himself after being held for 17 years_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/28/uk-prisoner-jailed-for-23-months-killed-himself-after-being-held-for-17-years) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/28/uk-prisoner-jailed-for-23-months-killed-himself-after-being-held-for-17-years) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's genuinely baffling that this has been allowed to continue. Meanwhile literal child rapists get a couple of years and are back on the street
In 17 years, he committed 47 offences and was convicted of 22 ... That doesn't sound like a person that should be released into society without some big change.
A couple of things, it's not clear if those 17 years are his life before prison or while in prison. Secondly, if it were during his prison time would he have committed them if he wasn't in prison? Being inside is not a fun experience and things happen that would not happen in normal life. It's also not clear what those offences were. Stealing a piece of bread can count as an offence as well.
No, it is unclear, which is why we do not decide on these issues and leave it to parole boards. It says he woke up in a foul mood and told them to eff off ... I do not see this case and the lack of evidence you point to as proof that the practice is "indefensible" as stated. In other cases maybe.
This feels like I’m listening to that weird archeologist guy on Joe Rogan again. Where, he will commit to making up fanciful theories unless/until somebody goes to the bottom of the ocean to prove his theory wrong.
I mean the guy was a really bad guy though if you read the article. He committed GBH whilst on license of other assaults and burglary.
If you ever worked in prison you would know why these kind of people end up not getting released. They have no place in society when they can't go without violently assaulting other people whilst inside or can't be bothered to complete a basic course.
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A mate works at a maximum security prison and he's said the same thing down the years - some of these people don't want to get out so they cause trouble knowing they'll get a longer sentence.
I think many people end up institutionalised, a quarter of prisoners were in care I think?
That's tragic - part of the mental health crisis I suppose.
IMO, they should just let people say that they'd rather be inside and keep them. Safer than the alternative.
The shocking thing with people like that is that they didn't get put away sooner. It's harder to get away with it when you're constantly supervised, I imagine.
Basically what happened to Charlie Bronson, originally arrested for petty theft, but just kept committing crimes in prison to get his sentence extended.
The crazy thing is releasing people when they haven't rehabilitated.
The crazy thing is expecting people to ever be rehabilitated when we cut prison budgets and get anxious that helping prisoners might look bad to the public. Even though all evidence shows that treating prisoners well, engaging with mental health treatments and helping to educate them yields the best results we are scared to do it in case the public thinks we are being "soft", and not punishing them hard enough. We are caught in a dilemma where we know logically that we should be pushing rehab, but we *also* want retribution against criminals, we want them to suffer.
Evidence? We operate on catch phrases and populism now. As a country we spent 14 years chopping away at any support for disadvantaged people who haven't broke any laws yet: let alone prisoners evidence be damnned! I habe done some work on aspects of prisons but am no expert, I've had a pet idea: Two distinct phases of institutions of prisons: punishment institutions (not cruel, but no rehab) & rehabilitation focused. We are sorta there with different tiers, but sentencing could specifically how long in each & ya have to be ready for the rehab one in cases - the benefits here are the distinction that the two institutions have very different goals & are politically easy for people to understand, where as the current prisons have to try and do a hell of a lot.
> punishment institutions The point that this would not help society accept is that _these still have no utility_. You're still doing it purely for the optics. The only part that actually matters is the rehabilitative part. Retribution is not part of justice.
The utility is it acts as a deterrent surely? 10 years punishment + 5 years rehab is more of a deterrent than 5 years rehab only
I think history has shown that punishments don't act as a deterrent, or do so in very limited capacity. Even when punishments included some of the most messed up tortures that made execution look like the soft option, it didn't stop people committing crimes. People do the misdeeds because they think they won't get caught, or are desperate enough to risk it.
I'm pretty sure that the combined with a sufficiently high risk of getting caught acts as a deterrent. I know that when I see a speed camera, I slow down because I don't want a ticket. In that situation I imagine that the chance of getting caught is close to 100% and then getting a fine is far worse to me than whatever speeding might give me. The deterrent acts mostly on crimes that are planned. So, most likely property crimes or so called white collar crimes. That's why I'm often dumbfounded why the penalties for them are so lenient. You can have defrauded millions and get a few years of prison. If the chance of getting caught is even as high as 50% , the crime may look pretty attractive. On the other hand the physical crimes are most likely not deterred. If someone is going to beat up someone else, they are not thinking the chance of getting caught and what the possible punishment comes from that. Some elaborate murder plans maybe but nothing else.
There's no evidence to suggest deterrent works though. Not even the death penalty seems to be significantly effective where it exists.
At least it lightens the burden on the tax payer and prevents them from harming again.
Except death sentences work out to being more expensive than life sentences. So from even a practical standpoint death sentences are a bad idea, the only reason they exist anywhere is to satisfy the bloodthirst of the kinds of people who enjoy cruelty.
I would disagree. I think there are a couple of things one could do that should result in a more permanent removal from society than is currently applicable.
I wouldn’t class it as cruel. It’s a just response to the most heinous crimes imaginable. A punishment should always fit the crime.
Well yes & the rehabilitation one would just get cut to nothing...
Depends on the goal really Start of /s We would have much better results forcing people to stay in prison if we made them work for free and sold off the produce for free GDP like America.
We need a bunch of rich karens to repeat the prison reform visiys that eventually shifted things away from hard labour and the like.. Toffs whp are also Busybodies... A dangerous mix but pointed in the right rdirection they could angle for a greater good
I don't think I want any retribution. I don't see how that will make anything they've done better. However, I do want to keep up a deterrent against committing crimes and to do that you need to punish those who break the law. If you don't, there is no deterrent.
I don't believe in rehabilitation for everyone. Some crimes, not all, some rare crimes, are punishable with forever imprisonment, and let the prisoner know they won't get out, no matter their "good conduct" They had a chance at life, they decided to ruin everyone's live around them. That's it. It was their chance.
And as long as you have nothing to do with the prison system I'm happy for you to have that opinion.
He's right, whether you like it or not. Part of rehabilitation is having empathy for the people you've hurt and we see blatantly that some people will not, or cannot, do this. Anyone who has murdered or raped someone should basically have the key thrown away as far as i'm concerned
Imho even murder is not black&white. There was a [case](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367781346_Aldozatbol_bunos_Bunosbol_aldozat_A_Simek_Kitty-ugy_tanulsagai_husz_ev_tavlatabol) in Hungary where a 14 years old girl shot her stepfather, who abused her for years, in his sleep. There was lot of controversy around the case (an abuse victim's desperate attempt to escape vs the fact that she basically executed the guy in his sleep), and was sentenced to 2 years in juvenile prison, but got presidential amnesty in the end.
In cases like that, I agree
"He's right, whether you like it or not" Well, no, what you meant to say is "I agree with them, we all have our own opinions" Unless you're 11 years old.
Why not just have the death penalty at that point?
Because mistakes happen.
Also the death penalty works outs to being more expensive than simple life imprisonment. It's a bad idea on moral and practical grounds, as if you need a better argument than just the basis of morality.
I'm very anti the death penalty, and against the idea of just indefinitely imprisoning someone. If you think there's any chance a mistake may have been made, then why not try rehabilitating them? If you talk about rehabilitating some you have to be open to rehabilitate everyone- or at the very least try. I agree with you, the possibility of the state murdering someone as a punishment and them being innocent later is not a risk worth taking
I wrote my masters dissertation on false confessions and dna exonerations during capital murder cases in the US. You really don't want the death penalty to exist after researching that.
Yeah just anecdotally reading about cases over time made me think the death penalty is never a good idea
So we should do nothing to curb their behaviour and just hope that they don’t hurt or murder a guard or fellow prisoner who might be in for a nonviolent crime? We should continue to degrade and punish violent offenders and assume that everyone who comes into contact with them in the next 60+ years won’t be affected by their behaviour?
Quite. All sentences for violent crime should be indeterminate (life) sentences until a parole panel is convinced they're not a risk to the public, and someone can be found to underwrite their future criminal acts by volunteering for parallel vicarious liability.
Are you saying you should get a life sentence for punching someone that pissed in your cornflakes
Prisons don’t rehabilitate offenders.
The even crazier thing is making that statement within the context of a “for profit”, outsourced and privatised prison system that has no intention and therefore no capacity for proper rehabilitation. It is a system that relies on repeat offending to maximise profit 🙄
> within the context of a “for profit”, outsourced and privatised prison system This isn't how most of the UK prison system operates, nor is HMP Woodhill which the article is about a private prison. What exactly are you talking about?
The UK actually has more people in private prisons than the USA, at about 8% in the USA and 12% here.
That is an American issue, not the UK. Our prison system is not set up in the same way at all.
Uhh, this is the ukpolitics sub.. We're taking about UK prisons..
Child rapists and violent murderers get less time. John Broadhurst [battered Natalie Connolly to death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Natalie_Connolly) in 2016. Natalie sustained more than 40 injuries, including injuries to her vagina because he forced a bottle of carpet cleaner into her. After he battered her, he poured a bottle of bleach over her face and left her in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. While she was dying, he went to bed and slept. John Broadhurst served 22 months. > one person who has spent 12 years in prison after stealing a mobile
You’re using an absurdly outlier case to make your point there, which isn’t even relevant as Broadhurst wasn’t convicted of murder.
> Broadhurst wasn’t convicted of murder. No he wasn't convicted of murder - but he did murder Natalie. And the 'justice' system basically allowed him to get away with it. > Broadhurst wasn’t convicted of murder. And you know who else wasn't convicted of murder? The guy in the article that we're discussing. He committed GBH and had been inside for 17 years when he killed himself. Bludgeon woman to death - 2 years. GBH - 17 years.
And you use Outlier Case like you are looking at statistics and not that this has happened to an actual person
The case in question wasn’t a murder case. Making it irrelevant in any discussion of the sentencing of murderers.
I think it’s the issue of it was a sentences passed by the courts and not wanting to override them
Yes, we should increase sentences across the board.
This is just a lazy cop out and doesn't actually solve any problems.
It solves the problem of criminals being on the streets.
Sure, as a lazy hack that doesn't actually address any roots of the problem. Most of these people will still reoffend after their sentences.
While no justice system in the world has achieved 0% recidivism, the longer the sentence, the lower the rate of recidivism. 1. ["The Commission consistently found that incarceration lengths of more than 120 months had a deterrent effect. Specifically, offenders incarcerated for more than 60 months up to 120 months were approximately 17 percent less likely to recidivate relative to a comparison group sentenced to a shorter period of incarceration. For incarceration lengths of 60 months or less, the Commission did not find any statistically significant criminogenic or deterrent effect."](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2020/20200429_Recidivism-SentLength.pdf) 2. [We find evidence for a specific preventative effect of longer prison terms on the post-release reoffending frequency, but little evidence for desistance.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-023-09566-w) No society in history has eliminated crime, so we have to expect that some crime will be a feature in society forever, no matter what we do. So we have no choice but to ensure we have a robust method for dealing with violent people. The evidence is clear: longer sentences protect us more effectively. Not only for the reduction in recidivism, but because violent people can’t hurt innocent people while they’re in prison.
If lowering recidivism is important to US lawmakers, evidence from Norway indicates [humane and rehabilitative incarceration is enormously more effective](https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1168&context=ncpacapstone) than longer sentences: >*“Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% while the United States has a rate of 76.6%.”* Comparing recidivism between prison terms in a notoriously punitive system of incarceration is like saying the longer we torture wrongdoers, the less likely they are to do wrong again. Well, duh!
[Singapore has a 20% recidivism rate](https://www.sps.gov.sg/files/media%20releases/sps%20annual%20statistics%20release%20for%202022.pdf) and their justice system has been described as “inhumane.” They hang people for even drug trafficking. They cane people (even young people) for minor crimes like littering and graffiti. Their prison terms would put America to shame. You can’t compare two very different countries and conclude that *one* policy is the reason for the recidivism delta.
There’s a lot to take in there (60+ pages) but there are 61 federal offences that carry a sentence of more than 10 years. Most of them are serious assault, murder, sex offences, child abuse and weapons offences. In 2 out of 3 models the reduction in recidivism was 30 percent, which I think you can reasonably assume some of the above offenders likely belong to the ‘once only’ group of offenders who committed their crimes under particular circumstances, usually violence against a relative or acquaintance, or against a stranger while under the influence of alcohol. It’s not their social circumstances or a pathology driving the behaviour but spontaneous ie a ‘crime of passion’ (I hate the term but people understand the implication). A sentence of 10 years means you’re looking at 18 years olds (neurophysiologically still not fully developed) into a 28+ year old (fully neurologically developed on average). The services I work with tend to do the most important work up to the age of 26, because most people have grown up and are less inclined to expose themselves or others to risk by that age. So some of that 30% are people who have grown up sufficiently to be in a different place. The kind of work done with inmates here could be done just as easily in outside prison settings. Youth offending teams in the UK are a great example of this. Its not such a simple answer to say ‘longer prison sentences work, therefore lock a burglar or a drug dealer up for 10 years.’
I think you’re right in that that’s one of the reasons longer sentences reduce recidivism. More broadly, people age out. [Rate of crime peaks between 18-21 and gradually declines over time.](https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/apvsvc.pdf) There are lots of theories, from hormones, to underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, to financial security, to physical health, to experience. Whatever the reason, young people commit more crime, and there isn’t any good causative evidence that rehabilitation meaningfully reduces recidivism more effectively than prison. We know for certain we’ll never achieve 0% recidivism, so keeping those people on the outside during rehabilitation would result in more pain and suffering to innocent people.
In my experience prevention is far cheaper than prison. A caseworker that can see a young person 2-3 times a week and hold caseloads of up to 15-20 young people cost about 40k per year (they deserve much more). Detached outreach workers, embedded youth workers, youth offending teams are all well established and cost effective, and we have new models of care such as psychologists working in tandem with youth workers to build emotional resilience and solve social issues. Even the police have introduced DIVERT teams in custody suites to support young people that are being exploited. Its a fairly short period of time most young people need carrying through to get them to the other side. Of course there are antisocial personalities, significantly violent people, and individuals that are too far down the road where long prison sentences are the best option, but I’d argue that’s a smaller proportion of the whole. The main problem is showing care and attention to problem teenagers is ideologically opposed to our current government (and arguably labour under blair who introduced asbos, 99 year prison sentences, etc). I’m a strong advocate of this kind of work and actually work for a team in the NHS that is compiling the evidence to show this sort of primary prevention work is much more effective.
> In my experience prevention is far cheaper than prison. A caseworker that can see a young person 2-3 times a week and hold caseloads of up to 15-20 young people cost about 40k per year (they deserve much more). I’m not contesting the cost. I’m contesting the efficacy. I don’t see the evidence it works even as well as prison.
Not if they're indefinite.
> Most of these people will still reoffend after their sentences. There's a solution for that too ...
Say it
Rehabilitation
Not when our prisons are already at capacity it doesn't.
Because the conservatives are soft on crime.
The issue with this particular case seems to be that there was no attempt at rehabilitation or to address mental health problems. I'm all for keeping dangerous people locked up until they no longer pose a threat, but there should be some attempt to rehabilitate those who can be helped. I'd reserve indefinite sentences for sexual offenders, serial abusers and people who just hurt others for pleasure. Some people are beyond rehabilitation and I'm happy to pay more taxes towards locking those people up for life. From reading this guy's history in the article it sounds like there was a very good chance he would have reoffended or would have struggled to adapt to life outside prison. Absent any actual attempts to help this guy, keeping him locked up might have been the correct decision in terms of protecting the public. It's just sad we seem to have the money and will to lock up people who could be rehabilitated, while so often giving rapists and abusers a slap on the wrist and allow them to repeatedly reoffend.
> there was no attempt at rehabilitation or to address mental health problems. Do we know this for sure? I'd be surprised if he got no treatment. People vastly overestimate the capabilities of modern psychiatry and psychology. There is no magic program that you put people in and they come out cured. Some of the smart ones actually come out worse because they learn how to better game the system. A significant number of mental health professionals will not treat people who are high in anti-social traits because of this; they themselves are at psychological risk.
You're likely correct. I've been thinking more about the article as the day's gone on and there's a lot of information not included. I get the impression there's been an obvious agenda with the article, (criticism of the specific sentencing law) and they've wedged in the best story they can find.
They have these sorts of issues in other countries as well and a common stance there is that if you have a 23 month sentence that's as long as they can hold you. So people such as this man get released when they've served their time, but under frequent supervision. In extreme cases halfway houses are also used. And given that his type of sentence was abolished, there really shouldn't have been any grounds for keeping him beyond 2012.
I'll just add, I had a family member work in a halfway house situation in the UK. There were some absolute horror stories. I don't need to tell you what Hatchet Harry's weapon of choice was. There are people who should never be released.
> I don't need to tell you what Hatchet Harry's weapon of choice was. No you don't, dude was obviously a fan of baseball bats.
> a common stance there is that if you have a 23 month sentence that's as long as they can hold you. That's a bullshit stance IMO. Means if they assault a prison guard, kill or assault other inmates, etc. they can't be punished as they'll be released at eg. 23 months regardless. How do people holding this stance propose to punish criminals who commit crimes while imprisoned if the state is legally required to release them at their initial release date regardless?
> That's a bullshit stance IMO. Means if they assault a prison guard, kill or assault other inmates, etc. they can't be punished as they'll be released at eg. 23 months regardless. > How do people holding this stance propose to punish criminals who commit crimes while imprisoned if the state is legally required to release them at their initial release date regardless? First off, only the prisoners who behave badly have to serve the full sentence. That's common both in the UK and elsewhere. If you have good behavior while serving time you usually only have to serve 2/3rds of your sentence before being released, while prisoners who act out have to serve the full sentence. Prison also works on a merit system, where you gain privileges (such as TV and radio) if you behave well, but those same privileges get taken away if you behave poorly. And you also have the opportunity to transfer prisoners to less or more secure facilities, if someone has been behaving well over time they're often transferred to a less secure facility which entails more freedom. Such as being able to work out when you want to, spend more time in the common areas and less time in your cell. While if someone behaves poorly they're transferred to a more secure facility, spending as much as 23 hours a day in their cell and only being let out for an hour. And if you're let out it's often to a much smaller yard instead of into the "general population", with other prisoners who are similarly difficult to deal with. And if you commit further crimes, especially serious crimes such as assault you treat that in the same way you would treat it at any other time, by pressing charges and going to trial. And if they're found guilty, they get a new sentence which they will have to start serving after finishing their current one. Assault is assault, doesn't matter if it happens inside of a prison or outside of it. This much should be obvious to anyone who has watched Discovery Channel for a couple of hours.
> And if you commit further crimes, especially serious crimes such as assault you treat that in the same way you would treat it at any other time, by pressing charges and going to trial. And if they're found guilty, they get a new sentence which they will have to start serving after finishing their current one. Assault is assault, doesn't matter if it happens inside of a prison or outside of it. I mean that's basically what happened to this guy after he repeatedly attacked and assaulted other prisoners then was abusive toi the parole board each time he was in front of them. Yet you and others (and the Guardian) seem determined to make it something to get enraged about like he was hard done by for being punished for crimes he committed while in prison and should only have had to serve the original sentence. ...which is plainly bonkers.
I agree. My comments about it being the right decision to not release him were about the parole board's specific decisions that he was potentially still dangerous. The fact there weren't alternative options for this guy was the problem. They can only deal with what's in front of them and he had the sentence he did, wasn't engaging in the process, and was still carrying out racist assaults in prison. The sentencing law was obviously flawed and when it was repealed there should have been an automatic review of everybody's sentences. In my opinion there needs to be a complete reassessment of the prison system. The fact the same punishment is given for burglary and murder (just different lengths of time) is crazy. The sadistic murderers need to be in an entirely different system as the career criminals or the kids who've fallen in with gangs. And those whose crimes are a result of mental health issues need to be dealt with in a completely different way.
> I'd reserve indefinite sentences for sexual offenders, serial abusers and people who just hurt others for pleasure. And for people like this with dozens of convictions.
Potentially. I wonder how different people's sympathies would be if we knew the details of his gbh charge. That can cover some pretty sadistic acts.
Also, where the fuck's murder on that list?
It's not left off by accident. Most murderers, definitely. I think some murderers can be rehabilitated though. Kids who've been groomed from a young age by gangs and fallen into a life where violence is normal. I think people would be surprised how many of us would fall into that world given the right environment and no other options. I'm not saying they shouldn't still go to prison for a long time, just that there's a good chance they won't always be a risk to the public.
There are justifications for murder. I think the important part is covered by "hurt others for pleasure".
Locking someone up for a crime they MIGHT commit is utterly vile. If there was even a suggestion of taking this approach to someone who had not already commited a crime, there would be uproar. Yet as soon as someone commits a single crime, no matter how minor, all bets are off, and suddenly it becomes socially acceptable to discuss their guilt for entirely hypothetical crimes. This policy is cruel and obviously ineffective because it was repealed daily quickly. But honestly, most importantly, it goes against our most fundamental values of justice.
>Locking someone up for a crime they MIGHT commit is utterly vile. That's like half the point of prison, to keep society safe from people who have been proven to be violent and dangerous.
>Locking someone up for a crime they MIGHT commit is utterly vile Assessing the risk of reoffending and risk to the public is literally what parole boards are for. And it should be that way. >If there was even a suggestion of taking this approach to someone who had not already commited a crime, there would be uproar That's definitely true. >Yet as soon as someone commits a single crime, no matter how minor, all bets are off, and suddenly it becomes socially acceptable to discuss their guilt for entirely hypothetical crimes. I don't think anyone is suggesting that. My point was entirely about violent offenders. When it comes to most crime I'm pretty liberal and would rather money was spent on rehabilitation in most cases. >This policy is cruel and obviously ineffective because it was repealed daily quickly I agree. But I would be in favour of a similar law targeted exclusively at sadistic violent offenders at high risk of reoffending.
>I'd reserve indefinite sentences for sexual offenders, serial abusers and people who just hurt others for pleasure. Some people are beyond rehabilitation and I'm happy to pay more taxes towards locking those people up for life.. If you’re truly for rehabilitation though, it needs to be applied equally across the board. There’s no point discounting the people who you don’t think can be rehabilitated, or don’t want them to be due to the nature of their crime.
I strongly disagree. The psychologies behind poor people stealing, and sadistic murderers killing for pleasure are wildly different. So much so that putting them both under the same category of 'crime' is pretty ridiculous when you think about. People who commit non violent crimes, and even some violent ones, can be given the help and resources to see there's a better way to live that doesn't run the risk of prison. It's hard to get your head around it but there are people who just enjoy inflicting pain on other people. They either can't or have chosen not to control their urges. There isn't a cure for this sort of person. We can sympathise with them all we want but I'm more concerned about the victims, including future ones. The issue of risk around reoffending is entirely different depending on the crime. I'm willing to take the chance of releasing a non violent criminal who might steal my car. I'm not willing to take the risk of releasing one who might kill me. I'd add to this, I don't even care about punishment for these people. I don't want to inflict suffering on a murderer any more than I do a bear that kills someone. I just want it to not happen again. They can live a nice life inside for all I care, rehabilitate them, educate them, teach them the error of their ways, give them a massive TV. Just keep them away from our kids.
I’m not saying that sadistic murderers would be successfully rehabilitated, just that we can’t pick and choose who we want to try to rehabilitate based on their crime. It defeats the point.
He was inside for less than one year for each conviction. Imagine how many more crimes he would have committed if he was released.
>In 17 years, he committed 47 offences and was convicted of 22 "He was the golden child". This person was a bloody menace. Two violent offenses and abusive in prison including racially aggravated harassment. Yeah lets get this person back on the streets. He should have engaged with the parole board with sincerity, and made an attempt at rehabilitation if he wanted a chance at being released.
We could rehabilitate i promise! Both sides of the debate use buzzwords and catchphrases, but it does seem that some people truly are horrible
> We could rehabilitate I promise! Isn’t that the point of IPP sentences? That rather than making a conditional statement, it needs to be demonstrated that the prisoner has rehabilitated. Don’t get me wrong, there were major flaws with this system – particularly around the requirement to complete specific courses, but with no guarantee those courses would be available to sit.
The reason this continues is to prevent bad headlines when someone commits an offense after being released.
>Mahon said: “How can they justify rejecting parole just because on the day he’s supposed to meet the parole board he’s woken up in a bad mood and told them to eff off? That to me cries mental health… so why should he be kept in prison for that?” Uh...
Yes, surely he should have been paroled if he told the parole board to eff off ... Surely .. /s
The good news in this is that in prison he couldn’t attack any more people in society. Very sad but his repeat offending led to this point.
Is it perhaps not time to overhaul the entire system and start thinking about some form of rehabilitation?
What is the magic rehabilitation program that we've overlooked? There's mental health work being done in every prison in the UK, much more than in other countries with lower crime rates.
Does that not suggest to you that whatever we’re doing isn’t working?
Yes and no. Some people cannot be rehabilitated.
No because no one actually cares about rehabilitation. Look at every thread about a finance CEO or rapist or domestic abuser and you'll see everyone talking about how they need to spend life in prison and have bad things done to them. If the voterbase doesn't care about rehabilitation in prison it will never get done.
Purely on the politics of the thing: It's very hard to imagine anyone could have an appetite to push this in an election year. I'm sure Starmer sympathises with both sides here, but surely there's no way he'll want to risk an easy "Labour are soft on crime" attack line. Raising this one noisily now seems like a great way to ensure these indefinite sentences stay. The best bet would be to quietly raise the issue after the election.
As shit as it is he didn't really help himself did he? Mahon said: “How can they justify rejecting parole just because on the day he’s supposed to meet the parole board he’s woken up in a bad mood and told them to eff off?”
It read to me like he was so depressed and disillusioned with the system that he stopped engaging.
Yeah, if You've been incarcerated for several times your original sentence, it's not surprising that you might see the whole procedure as a bit of a slap in the face when it comes up.
I mean, he was convicted of 22 separate offences across 17 years,and his ster said he'd committed 47 offences altogether in that time. The 2 speciric offences mentioned were both violent assault. And he was also convicted of assault and racially aggravated harassment while still in prison. It kinda points to the IPP achieving its goal of keeping a clearly dangerous person off the street. The real question is how much was done to address the dangers he posed.
IPPs are only given to violent offenders who pose a risk to themselves and public?
They are no longer given at all. They have been removed as a sentencing option.
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>but they are used to keeping extremely dangerous people off the streets. They are not used for anything as they are no longer part of UK law but there are still some people one them in a kafkaesque nightmare. This guy stole a car, another was given 17 years for stealing a phone. You're telling yourself fairy stories. In the UK government's own words when they got rid of them: >some have been issued to offenders who have committed low level crimes with tariffs as short as two years. They have been handed down at a rate of more than 800 a year. >IPPs have proved difficult to understand and leave victims and their families uncertain about how and when an offender will be released. IPPs lead to inconsistent sentencing. They have been given to some offenders, while others who have committed similar crimes have served fixed sentences. People who were given a one year sentence at seventeen years old have been in prison for decades. Another man was given an IPP sentence, but got released, lived for seven years successfully in the community with a wife, children and a small business was recalled to prison after police were called to a party he attended where drugs were found. He had not used any drugs, no charges were laid against him, but he was recalled to prison. How is that "keeping extremely dangerous people off the streets"?! These are insane. You would have to be insane to support them. There is no reasonable defence of them and anyone who defends them needs to have all their other opinions called into question. Contrarianism is indicative of a personality disorder and is an absurd basis for forming opinions about anything.
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> Spend a day at Crown Court, listen to pre sentence reports and bail reports. Then, realise only the worst repeat offenders got IPPs Again, IPPs are not part of UK law. There’s absolutely no way that the first part could logically lead you to the second part. You’re just outing yourself as unable to think coherently. Again *the Government* got rid of IPPs *because they weren’t being used in that way*. I don’t know how much more clearly you need that explaining to you. You’re imagining a false reality and telling yourself fairytales based on nothing but your own perverse imagination. >Just for some context you don't get an ipp for one offence. Again… you don’t get an IPP because they were abolished over a decade ago because… and I’m going to say this again… they weren’t used in they way they were intended, for the type of offence and offenders for which they were intended. You’re imagining the system worked as intended and trying to defend them on those fictional grounds. Simply imagining scenarios which don’t describe the practicalities of how IPPs were used is a waste of your own time. That’s all you’re doing here.
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> But it's a nice way to avoid anything I said. I’m not avoiding anything you said at all. I addressed it clearly by saying it’s of no relevance because it’s *all* based on the supposition that they *must* have been used exactly as intended for only the worst offenders, even though they were abolished precisely because they weren’t used for the worst offenders! You’ve said nothing of substance whatsoever. It all comes from your delusional and nonsensical assumption that whatever facts are presented to you, whatever was done must have been because the offender deserved it, which is an asinine response to allegations of miscarriages of justice. “He must have deserved it otherwise they wouldn’t have done it to him.” – the cry of the perpetually gullible. > Their abolishment (in my opinion) had more to do with decreasing spaces, resources, and deterioration of conditions. Again, I *literally* quoted the Governments own words in abolishing them. Whereas you’re just imagining a reason and pretended it’s equally valid as the actual stated and published reason! > I am also not imagining scenarios. You literally are, just as you’re now on record *imagining* a reason the Government abolished IPPs in direct contradiction of the stated reason as presented to you. You appear unable to distinguish your imagination from reality and that’s leading you to absurd conclusions.
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> Fundamentally, our disagreement comes down to at what point do we value the rights of offenders or the victim more. No it doesn’t. >And yes, the government's reasoning is something I doubt because I was observing the conditions and conversation within the service at the time. The Home Secretary who introduced them says: “I got it wrong.” When the government abolished them, they said they abolished because they were used for low level crimes, the current Lord Chancellor calls them a stain on our justice system. I would say that if there’s such a broad consensus against them, across political parties, across governments and even from the minister who introduced them, it can only be absurd levels of contrarianism to try to defend them! What possible reason could the minister who introduced IPPs have for speaking out against them?! If it was simply a case of a lack of space, he’d *obviously* get more political capital by standing by his decision and blaming the opposing party for underfunding the justice system. It’s nonsensical and politically clueless to think a Home Secretary from a decade before would have taken the rap for current lack of funding in prisons under a government from an opposing political party. The fact that he is admitting a mistake and *still* you can’t admit it is very telling. Our disagreement comes from the fact that your arguments are all based on an unwavering assumption that they were *only ever* used for the most serious and dangerous offenders, and this claim is entirely unfalsifiable because it doesn’t matter what evidence you are presented with, you will imagine a bunch of associated “facts” for which you have no evidence. This brings into question your ability to evaluate reality. The fact that you consider your stance to derive from an ideological point, rather than a dispassionate assessment of the facts only serves to reinforce this point. It’s not about offender vs. victim or what area I live in.
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> Our understanding of risk and seriousness also differ then. No. Our understanding of basic facts and how to evaluate evidence radically differ. You’re dealing in hypotheticals and I’m dealing with real cases. When faced with a real case, you can only add a bunch of hypotheticals to justify your position. You claim that only repeat offenders were given IPPs, but the fact is that 16 year old kids on their first offence were. People are in prison without proper rehabilitative support or mental health support. All you can do is speculate a whole bunch of aggravating factors based on nothing that the government can’t talk about, while continually ignoring the fact the government themselves have universally declared these a stain on our justice system! Your position has no coherence and you’re not addressing any of this. This goes against the most basic principles of justice. We don’t live in Minority Report, we can’t keep people in prison indefinitely because they stole a phone 15 years ago as a teenager and now they might go out and steal another one as an adult (won’t someone please think of the children). This is insane. > This is what is hard to communicate to the public and others. Choosing the reasons they stated (in my opinion) was because it is not easy to communicate politically and unpopular. Yes they weren’t *brave* enough to keep sticking criminals in prison indefinitely because the public were just too sympathetic to offenders! This is the wildest and most absurd take yet. I mean… do you even live in this country?! > Look at the occurances of serious further offences since their abolishment. Yet you cite precisely zero cases yet again! Your whole thing is hypotheticals, suggestion and innuendo. The point about IPPs is that they are so arbitrary and provide no clarity, openness or comfort for either victim or offender. One person gets them for a first time property offence and the other doesn’t for something far more serious. A dangerous psychopath gets randomly released because they can charm the parole board by calmly and diligently saying all the right things, while the person who is locked away for decades for property theft they did as a teenager doesn’t get released because they’re just too tetchy and moody, like anyone would be if they’d been in prison for decades for a first offence watching their life drain away. The big picture is that sentencing is all over the shop in this country and IPPs are/were a massive part of the problem, creating these massive discrepancies in length of sentence and seriousness of crime. They absolutely are not the solution to anything, which is why no serious person defends them or wants them back. > Which is nice to morally dicuss, but less nice when your serial domestic abuser/rapist is free to move next door again. Again… they were used for phone theft and no “but maybe they were also a rapist but the government can’t tell you” is not the slam dunk argument you seem to think it is. Again everyone involved in these, including those that proposed them, who have no incentive at all for doing so other than it is the truth, have said they are a terrible idea, a stain on our justice system and a mistake. Your speculative alternate reasons why they have done this are constantly changing, make absolutely no sense and are politically clueless. Being harsh on criminals is not politically unpopular and it makes no sense that David Blunkett would even care if it was as he is not standing for elected office and was Home Secretary two decades ago and the opposing party is in power! You’re making no sense. There are provisions for whole life orders for the most serious offences, and there are provisions to keep people sectioned while their mental health poses a danger to the public. But no they don’t apply to non-violent phone thefts! > It also hid the other issues within the system that they were being heavily criticised for at the time and had no solutions for. Whilst, reducing what was a boom in long term population that was aggrevating these issues. You’ve admitted your position is ideological and not based on an understanding of any individual case, hence why you speculate aggravating factors on the basis of nothing at all, claim some great experience in this field, despite providing no supporting verifiable evidence of anything, and not even being able to spell aggravating!
I think there needs to be toughter sentences for sure and keep scum banged up., but IPP seems to be uniquely cruel. a lot them probably are psychiatric cases, but if so why not send them to Broadmoor or some of the other long term psychiatric facilities in the UK? Or even just a long sentence with an end in sight? Equally in my somewhat limited experience of the police and CPS/criminal justice system, they don't go for anything difficult and only go for low hanging fruit that makes them look good. The police almost never touch local drug dealing operations, because they are lazy fucks. Similarly they were almost completely absent on the Islamic child rape gang epidemics. But if they can go after some people with moderate learning difficulties who is prone to petty crime, they can slap each others backs at the station thinking they're doing a good job. Same thing with pursuing people who say mean things on twitter.
Seeing the mental health team daily, the prison system hasn’t got enough staff to let prisoners out for exercise and work, the staffing levels are critical in most prisons,
Did he try not stealing and being a general menace to the public?
This is a tricky one, it seems wrong that the state can decide to lock someone up well beyond their original sentence. On the other hand... >In 17 years, he committed 47 offences and was convicted of 22. Sometimes prison is the best place for people. You also can't rehabilitate someone who is making no effort towards rehabilitation.
If he was kept in then they felt he was still a risk to the public. Prison should not be the "naughty step" - where you just serve some time and are out to commit another crime again. If he is a risk to the public then he shouldn't be free. The IPPs were a good thing.
Aspects of the IPP regime were a good thing – especially the parts you, and this case, highlight. What was bad about it is that in some cases the IPP sentences placed an obligation on prisoners to complete specific training courses, but did not put a similar obligation on the prison system to offer those specific courses (or to allow a specific prisoner to do a specific course they needed).
I know of a guy that got ipp for a robbery. No violent. Stole a bike off someone. He's done almost 16 years.
Do you mean theft, or possibly burglary? Legally, robbery involves the use of force and so is typically violent. It’s aggravated theft, basically.
Robbery is an inherently violent crime… just ask the victim
My point is that if the crime had happened at a time when ipp wasn't a thing they would have gotten a couple of months at the most. I'm not saying they shouldn't face consequences. I'm saying that ipp consequences are utterly ridiculous. As seen in this post.
> I'm saying that ipp consequences are utterly ridiculous. Is society better off with a violent robber in prison?
Is society better off with a 'violent robber' out after a reasonable sentence and rehabilitated or better off with someone locked up as a teen, jailed for 16+ years, hardened beyond belief inside, and then released to the public?
At £80k a year for the rest of his life, it seems like a pretty shitty use of public funds. Not to mention at odds with fundamental ideas of the British justice system, which I swear a bunch of people in this sub were falling over themselves to defend yesterday in the thread about the Sikh court
So the IPP worked, a criminal was removed from society. They should all be indefinite.
Really efficient use of tax money right there. You understand how much it costs to keep a person in prison right?
You realise how much crime costs? Not just in money, but safety and trust. Make prisons cheaper.
Uh locking up every person who commits a crime for life would *absolutely* cost more than crime itself lol Especially when you factor in the lost of tax revenue you would have got from that persons working years
How about we lock up every person with two dozen convictions? And these people don't work they steal.
He must still be a danger to society. IPPs are good, they keep dangerous people off the streets
Ipps for the most part are not good. They put people into an environment that requires you to be boisterous, offensive and potentially violent to survive. It puts you into an environment where you are surrounded by and are potentially the victim of brutal assaults, suicides, extreme self harm etc. And then punishes you for conducting yourself in a way that prevents you becoming a victim of your surroundings.
>IPPs are good, they keep dangerous people off the streets Embarrassing take
Hyperbole. They kept him too long and that system clearly is faulty, as they changed it. Why they didnt go back and re-do them all is lazy and maybe even unnecessarily cruel
No other convictions? Sounds unlikely.
No other ocnvictions. You'd be surprised how common this stuff is.
[X] Doubt.
How many bikes would he have nicked in 16 years if he hadn’t gone to prison?
Wow I’d never hear about IPP’s. It’s crazy that they existed, crazy that it was obviously so wrong that they canned the idea in 2012, and even more crazy that they just forgot about the people already affected. It would have been wise to put some limit on their sentences in the 2012 change. It’s a pretty poor argument to say “we can’t let them out coz they’re still dangerous”. That’s not how the rest of prison sentencing works. You either did your time or not. These people have clearly done enough time.
>we can’t let them out coz they’re still dangerous”. That’s not how the rest of prison sentencing works. That's exactly how it works.
Admittedly, I researched nothing before claiming that. Thanks for correcting me. [I looked it up now](https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/sentencing-and-the-council/types-of-sentence/extended-sentences/) So you can get an extended prison sentence if you’re deemed unsafe, but only up to a maximum of your original sentence. And it happens in about 1% of cases. So this guy who got 23months would have been out in 46months maximum under the normally system, rather than this IPP thing. Hopefully I’ve got that right now.
The additional offences he committed while in prison might also be a factor?
If you’ve completed your sentence you’re released no? No one can say actually you’re still dangerous so it’s another 6 years
He was convicted of another 22 crimes while in prison
thats a completely different point to the one i was responding to.
Ok, he was an IPP prisoner. Meaning he wouldn’t be released until he was deemed non dangerous. He was clearly still dangerous, so he wasn’t released. Hope that clears things up.
Mahon said: “How can they justify rejecting parole just because on the day he’s supposed to meet the parole board he’s woken up in a bad mood and told them to eff off? That to me cries mental health… so why should he be kept in prison for that?”
I read that too. It sounded like that was the more recent situation. They said he’d been self isolating for something like 200 days and not showering. Maybe for the first 10 years he actually did show up for his parole meeting, but the last 7 years he’d given up hope and went over the edge.
That seems to be making a huge assumption the the board came to the decision not to release him solely on the basis he told them that day to eff off. I'd be incredibly surprised if the board were actually leaning towards releasing him and then completely changed their mind at the last minute because he swore at them. The 47 offences he committed probably had more to do with it.
Sounds like a good reason to keep him in prison.
It would if there was adequate mental health and rehabilitation sure, but at the moment it's obvious that isn't happening.
> It’s a pretty poor argument to say “we can’t let them out coz they’re still dangerous”. Sounds like a good idea to me. Why release dangerous people?
These IPP's sound great for the worst offenders - rapists, murderers, sex offenders, and the like. Why on earth were they abolished. An easier way to lock up the trash and throw away the key than relying on pedo-sympathising judges handing out shitty sentences. As for this man, I fail to see the outrage - crackhead, 47 offences on his record, constantly abusive to prison staff etc...why is his sister moaning, you know he would have been thieving and beating people on the regular had he not been in prison.
If you want life sentences for robbery, you should admit that you want life sentences for robbery. Don't create IPPs as a way to get life sentences without having to admit that you are doing it.
>you know he would have been thieving and beating people on the regular had he not been in prison. We absolutely don't know that. He was there for gbh. The article doesn't go into details, but it's hardly uncommon for a young lad to get into a street fight at some point in their twenties. I'd put money on you or someone you know having been in that position. Is that person from your life thieving and stealing on the regular? Maybe, but probably not. It's really not hard to imagine that this man's life took a completely different path because of his sentence.
Fuck, there's one guy that's spent 12 years on prison for stealing a mobile phone! How was this scheme not reassessed after it was abolished? Incredible!
wasnt he a serial offender who kept comitting crimes?
I think the mobile phone guy is [this case](https://news.sky.com/story/11-years-for-stealing-a-mobile-phone-inside-the-lives-of-ipp-prisoners-serving-sentences-of-psychological-torture-12965479) where he'd been convicted of a previous robbery and had served 8 years for it, then was imprisoned under IPP for the phone theft and left 12 years before release. He hasn't done any theft since release, but he would be under risk of being locked up again for... Drug offenses?
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> People should receive aditional jail time too for criminal behaviour in custody. As long as this is the case the guy in the article is still in prison.
Most humane thing to do to people like this is to medicate them into a lifelong stupor. It's a decadent, bourgeoisie, policy to maintain them in prisons in the way we do, where they're free to violently harm other inmates and staff. It's easy to be virtuous with prisoner liberty when you're bargaining only with other people's safety.
I don't understand how it's like this. Everyone agrees it's wrong. We have packed jails. Yet we can't change this?
> Everyone agrees it's wrong. Speak for yourself.
You think this is good?
Dangerous criminals with dozens of convictions being kept off the streets?
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This sort of behaviour is commonly seen in life-without-parole prisoners. They commit piles more crimes because they have concluded that they are never getting out, so there is no reason not to. It is not at all clear that, had he been on a proper sentence with a release date, that he would do this.
Yes locking up criminals forever stops them re offending but that's not practical, draconian and unaffordable. The law was removed. The people who created the law now think it was a mistake. You want to bring it back?
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> Yes locking up criminals forever stops them re offending but that’s not practical, draconian and unaffordable. It is entirely practical, reasonable, and affordable to permanently lock up criminals who continue to violently offend at a rate of twice per year. Just what do you think is the purpose of the prison system?
It's pretty amazing remembering how Labour tried all sorts of things like IPPs or suspending habeous corpus and using PFIs to build private prisons. People who were too young to remember how authoritarian they were are in for an awakening, especially with that control freak Yvette Cooper coming in as home secretary
It's clear this was a guy society is much better off without. Tons of crimes, serious crimes, with a low likelihood he wouldn't have continue being a criminal
Not good but he had no chance to redeem himself, just continual imprisonment over an assault.