Joshua: Thank you so much for having- characteristically - grasped this particular nettle. Like more or less all advocates - solicitors or barristers- at either Magistrates’ or Crown Court or both levels I HATED the counter intuitive collision between justice and the far too widely drawn original IPP legislation and I deplore the hesitation of ALL governments since to act upon the remaining significant rump of those far too long incarcerated for all the reasons itemised by the Justice Select Committee.
All credit to Lord BLUNKETT- with whom I rarely agreed over any sentencing strategy- for having ‘fessed up as the prime mover of the original ill conceived laws.
There will never be a comfortable time to put right this woeful injustice and the instances of geriatric offenders expiring in custody for relatively minor offences which nonetheless had them swept down the rabbit hole of IPP sentences will only increase.
It is worth adding that EXPERIENCED judges striving to do the right thing by society used so often to get it wrong when striving to wedge the abstruse flabbily drafted legislation square peg into a round hole.
The law of unintended consequences
Joshua: Thank you so much for having- characteristically - grasped this particular nettle. Like more or less all advocates - solicitors or barristers- at either Magistrates’ or Crown Court or both levels I HATED the counter intuitive collision between justice and the far too widely drawn original IPP legislation and I deplore the hesitation of ALL governments since to act upon the remaining significant rump of those far too long incarcerated for all the reasons itemised by the Justice Select Committee.
All credit to Lord BLUNKETT- with whom I rarely agreed over any sentencing strategy- for having ‘fessed up as the prime mover of the original ill conceived laws.
There will never be a comfortable time to put right this woeful injustice and the instances of geriatric offenders expiring in custody for relatively minor offences which nonetheless had them swept down the rabbit hole of IPP sentences will only increase.
It is worth adding that EXPERIENCED judges striving to do the right thing by society used so often to get it wrong when striving to wedge the abstruse flabbily drafted legislation square peg into a round hole.