ISPP/IPP
Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection
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CJA 1991 & 2003. An offender who has not been given a release date. These offenders have to satisfy a parole board before they are considered for release, so they have an eligability date from which they can apply to the parole board, but they do not have a set date for release since a decision is made based on a number of factors such as behaviour in prison, engagement with victim awareness programmes etc. IPP sentences have now been deemed inhumane & are no longer handed out, since it was felt to be unfair that prolific offenders who had not committed heinous crimes such as murder, could be held indefinitely with no release date. Denounced as "inhumane" and a form of "psychological torture" by UN torture expert Alice Jill Edwards, IPP sentences were scrapped in 2012. Since then the number of unreleased IPP prisoners has been reduced by three-quarters and those in custody are being supported to progress towards release through the government's refreshed IPP Action Plan