RIP the IPP: A Look Back at the Sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection

摘要

Anyone working within the criminal justice system will have responded with a weary sense of deja vu to the announcement, in autumn 2011, by the Secretary of State for Justice, Kenneth Clark, of a new sentencing regime. The proposals, now enacted into law by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, follow the practice of the previous administration of introducing significant changes to sentencing policy every few years, giving little opportunity for practitioners to get to grips with the existing policy. This is best exemplified by the approach to sentencing 'dangerous offenders' which, doubtless due to its political sensitivity, has attracted the greatest level of political interference. Here, the Act's provisions see an end to one of the more controversial pieces of recent sentencing legislation, the sentence of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) and a return to the previous policy of automatic life sentences for offenders convicted of a second serious violent or sexual offence.