10 June 2026

IPP sentences: A legal perspective on “stain” removal

PRT Fellow Dr Laura Janes KC (Hon) examines three existing legal measures to reduce the “stain” of the IPP sentence

In 2022 the justice committee found the IPP sentence to be “irredeemably flawed”, calling it a “stain” on the justice system. There is a cross-party consensus that the stain must be reduced, but the first tangible legal changes to the sentence since its abolition in 2012 did not occur until 2024, and while the court of appeal has always had the ability to quash and replace IPP sentences with alternatives, until recently it has often been slow to do so.

This blog takes a brief look at how the law and legal mechanisms can work to reduce the number of people under the shadow of the IPP sentence. It does not look at the progress of the IPP action plan in helping those stuck in prison to be released and begin the journey towards termination — that is much harder to measure and, surely must be the intense focus of future work to support people on IPP sentences.

An overview of legal measures to bring the IPP sentence to an end

There are three ways that IPP sentences can be brought to an end.

First, the court of appeal can quash the sentence where it was unwarranted in the first place.
Second, the licence (and therefore the sentence) can be terminated, either by a decision of the Parole Board or by operation of law after a certain time has passed.
Third, the Parole Board can release a person unconditionally, thereby bringing the sentence to an end.

Taken together, these mechanisms along with tweaks to make them more effective and accessible have facilitated the reduction in the number of people under this sentence in recent years, although the precise number is not known yet (I am working on that!).

Option 1 – Appeals against sentence

The first option has always been available: the court of appeal can overturn a sentence that is wrong in principle or manifestly excessive and substitute an alternative. The court has overturned at least 50 IPP or DPP sentences (and probably many more). Over time, the approach of the court has varied considerably. After a number of successful appeals to the first phase of IPP sentences, the court of appeal in 2006 in a case called Johnson appeared to narrow down the circumstances in which an appeal would succeed, emphasising that the court would not “normally interfere with the conclusions reached by a sentencer who has accurately identified the relevant principles, and applied his mind to the relevant facts”.¹ Nevertheless, appeals continued, and 10 years later in 2016, the court of appeal in a case called Roberts, further reduced the scope for appeals.² The court in that case dismissed all 13 appeals and emphasised that:

“where the judge has followed the …[law]… and passed a sentence of IPP in circumstances where it was properly open to the judge to pass such a sentence, this court will not now revisit sentences of IPP on the bases argued in these applications. Unless clear new points are raised, the court will in all such cases in the future simply refuse an extension of time without more. The remedy, if any, is one that the Executive and Parliament must address”.

Appeals continued, but were only successful if a clear error of law could be shown, including where the appropriate sentence at the time should have been a hospital order. However, more recently, there has been an increase in the number of appeals against sentences for IPPs and, in particular, those convicted as children. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) initiated a project in 2025 to encourage such appeals.³ In April 2026, the court of appeal heard six conjoined appeals, and quashed five sentences (the full written reasons are still awaited and it remains to be seen whether this judgment will encourage further appeals).

Option 2 – Licence terminations

The ability for the IPP licence to be terminated is the only thing that distinguishes the sentence in practice from a life sentence. However, when originally passed, the licence could only be terminated by the Parole Board 10 years after a person was first released from prison. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 changed that, reducing the qualifying period from 10 years to two or three years for those convicted as children and adults respectively. The act also changed the law so that after the expiry of the qualifying period, a licence would automatically terminate after two years of being in the community continuously. The Sentencing Act 2026 made further changes, reducing the qualifying period to two years for everyone and restoring the right to annual reviews if the Parole Board does not terminate the licence on the first application.

In February 2026, the Ministry of Justice confirmed that there had been a total of 2,668 terminations as of 30 June 2025.⁴ This is significant and accounts for 30% of the 8,711 IPP and DPP sentences originally imposed. No doubt, many more will have been terminated since June 2025, although at a slower rate. A good deal were terminated on the day the new law came into force — due to the length of time individuals had already spent in the community without recall. On 3 December 2025, the prisons minister stated that the termination changes “resulted in the number of people serving a sentence in the community falling by 65%.”⁵

Other mechanisms were introduced by the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 to try to iron out unfairness and enable recalled prisoners to benefit as much as possible from these provisions. For the first time, the act created a power for the secretary of state to re-release a recalled IPP prisoner on licence without reference to the Parole Board. This power has been used 58 times between November 2024 and December 2025.⁶ A power to disapply recall periods for the purpose of the time that counts towards automatic expiry was also introduced in the act, but appears to have been used most sparingly (as of March 2025, it had not been used at all).⁷

Option 3 – unconditional release by the Parole Board

The third option is the least likely to be used. Until November 2024 licence termination reviews continued as and when they were due, whether or not a person had been recalled. The act removed the right to a free-standing termination review where a person was in prison following recall but instead introduced a new option for the Parole Board to release a person without any conditions. This has the effect of bringing the sentence to an end.

In making a decision to release a person unconditionally, the Parole Board has to be satisfied that the new and stringent codified public protection test introduced by the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 is met and that public protection does not require the imposition of licence conditions. That is a high test and rarely applied. However, it may be appropriate in some cases, especially where the person is already subject to another order that will ensure ongoing public safety or where the sentence itself is the key problem as opposed to any actual risk of harm.

According to the Parole Board, as of 22 May 2026, since the Parole Board was granted the authority to direct the unconditional release of IPP and DPP prisoners, six cases have resulted in release (less than 1% of all eligible cases referred to the Parole Board for consideration of unconditional release).⁸

Such decisions are subject to possible review initiated by the secretary of state, via the reconsideration mechanism, setting aside applications, high court referrals or judicial review. However, if unchallenged, the decision means that the sentence ends and the person will not be subject to licence conditions or probation supervision, and cannot be recalled back to custody. Just because such applications are rarely granted, it does not mean that they should not be sought. If it is the sentence itself that is causing the harm, its removal may be the most realistic way to reduce harm for both the individual and the public. As the famous writing on the wall in 1960s Paris implored — “Soyez réalistes, demandez l’impossible” (“Be realists, demand the impossible”).

Loose ends

There is no doubt that taken together these three options are working to reduce the overall number of people under the IPP sentence, and that must be a good thing. Yet, there is always room for improvement. Only around a third of people having their licences reviewed by the Parole Board were legally represented. Legal aid for this work requires a person to have less than £1,000 capital and income of under £99 each week — which is incredibly low for a person who is ideally doing well in the community. Calls on ministers for legal aid for this small pool of people to be non-means tested have not been responded to at all. It is also not clear that there is a legal aid for applications for executive release or requests for the period of recall to be disapplied.

While recent successes in the court of appeal are positive, these cases tend to take a long time to get to court and it is difficult for prisoners to find lawyers to assist them.

Finally, these changes will do little to help those who have become stuck in the system. For that, much more focused and proactive change is required

Dr Laura Janes KC (hon) is a Fellow at the Prison Reform Trust