Written Question: Supervision of IPP Prisoners on Licence

Lord Moylan: To ask His Majesty's Government how many people serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence are currently on licence in the community; and of those, how many have had their supervision requirement terminated, broken down by the number of years since they were first released from custody.

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy): All IPP offenders are released on an IPP licence for a minimum period of 10 years. The Probation Service may apply to the Parole Board for the suspension of the supervisory conditions on an offender’s IPP licence only after the offender has completed five years of continuous, trouble-free resettlement and good behaviour in the community (other than in exceptional circumstances). The Parole Board is responsible for making the final decision on whether supervision should be suspended.

As of March 2022, 3,258 offenders, serving an IPP sentence, were on licence in the community. Of these, 172 offenders serving an IPP sentence have had their supervision requirement suspended. The following table shows this figure broken down by the number of years since they were first released from custody*.

Years since first Count of IPP Cases where the

release from custody supervision requirement is terminated

4 3

5 4

6 9

7 12

8 47

9 42

10 30

11 13

12 5

13 6

14 1

Grand Total 172

*Data Caveats:

• Three cases are shown as having data suspended after 4 years in the table above. This is because the policy previously allowed for consideration after 4 years, so some currently in the community applied under the previous policy at the 4 year point.

• As with any large administrative data source the possibility of errors cannot be eliminated.

• While data has been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last value presented.