Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many people serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence have been recalled more than once.

The Government is committed to the protection of the public and the effective management of offenders. By law, prisoners serving indeterminate sentences who have completed their tariff will be released only when the independent Parole Board concludes that the risk they present to the public is capable of being safely managed in the community under probation supervision.

As of 31 March 2021, there were 1,784 prisoners serving the IPP sentence in custody who have never been released.

As of the same date, there were 632 prisoners serving the IPP sentence in custody who had been recalled more than once, whilst there were 2243 offenders serving the IPP sentence in the community who have been released and not been recalled.

As of 8 July, 18 applications have been received from offenders requesting termination of their IPP licence. From September this year, officials will refer automatically to the Parole Board the case of every offender serving the IPP sentence who has become eligible to apply for termination of his/her IPP licence.

Notes for all figures:

1. These figures have been drawn from the Public Protection Unit Database and Prison-NOMIS held by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. As with any large-scale recording systems, the figures are subject to possible errors with data migration and processing.