Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many cases of Imprisonment for Public Protection are supervised in the community by the National Probation Service, by number of years since the tariff.

As at 31 December 2020, there were 3,125 offenders serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) being supervised in the community by the Probation Service in England and Wales. For the purposes of providing the information requested, relevant variables could be matched across the two separate datasets held centrally in only 2,637 of those cases.

The figures in this table have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Offenders serving an IPP sentence may be released into the community once they have completed their tariff only at the discretion of the Independent Parole Board. Once released, they are managed under licence by the Probation Service. The IPP licence period differs from licences for other indeterminate sentences in that, after 10 years from first release by the Parole Board, offenders can apply to the Board to have the licence terminated. The minimum 10-year period is not paused or reset if an offender is recalled to prison or serves a subsequent sentence for further offences.