A scandalous injustice: 4,614 IPPs stranded indefinitely in our prisons, 77% of them for crimes they haven’t yet committed. Action this day!
Dear all,
This email invites you to visit a new blog post on Ephems, at http://www.barder.com/4666, “A scandalous injustice: 4,614 IPPs stranded indefinitely in our prisons, 77% of them for crimes they haven’t yet committed. Action this day!”. In this I point to the outrageous indefinite incarceration in our shamefully overcrowded jails of thousands of prisoners originally given “Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection” (IPPs) under the barbarous system introduced under New Labour and belatedly abolished by the first Conservative Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, in 2012. Three-quarters of the 4,614 IPPs still in prison have completed their tariffs (the punishment element in their sentences), some of them many years ago, but they can’t qualify for release without satisfying the parole board that if released they won’t reoffend – an obvious logical impossibility. This Kafkaesque situation, in which thousands are in prison being punished daily, not for what they have done (they have completed their punishment for that) but for crimes that men and some women in suits think they might commit in future, can easily and simply be reformed by parliament if the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, can spare the time from Brexiteering. Details of the required reform are set out in the new blog post. Please read about the full horror of this indefensible breach of the human rights of thousands of our fellow-citizens by visiting http://www.barder.com/4666, and then writing to or emailing your MP and Mr Gove to demand urgent action, not “when the parliamentary timetable permits” but now. To save time you could send them a copy of this, with your strong personal endorsement and a request for an urgent reply.
For the full text of the blog post, and to read other people’s comments on it, please go to http://www.barder.com/4666, writing any comments, pro or anti, at the bottom of that blog post, not please in reply to this round-robin email.
Greetings from a cool grey June day in Earlsfield, birthplace of London’s new Mayor –
Brian
4 June 2016