Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many people serving (1) a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection, and (2) a life sentence, were under probation supervision following their release from prison in each year since 2009.

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 Parole Board concludes that it is no longer necessary on the grounds of public protection for them to remain confined.

Statistics on the indeterminate population in prisons are routinely published as part of the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/offender-management-statistics-quarterly.

The following table shows the number of people, serving (1) a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection, and (2) a life sentence, under post-release supervision in the community by the Probation Service, from 31 December 2009 to 31 December 2021.

Notes:

1. Due to a problem with the archived database, figures for this year (2022) are unavailable.
2. The Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence was introduced in 2005 as an indeterminate sentence targeted at serious offenders who, although they were thought to pose an ongoing risk to public safety, did not merit a life sentence. IPP sentences were abolished in 2012 by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act.
3. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by HM Prison & Probation Service. Consequently, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.