More lifers in English jails 'than whole of Europe combined'

Friday, 13 March 2009 2:13 PM

By politics.co.uk staff

There are more people serving open-ended or life sentences in jails in England and Wales than the whole of Europe, figures have shown.

Parliamentary answers revealed this week that there are 12,090 men, women and children serving various forms of life sentences in England and Wales.

According to campaigners, there are just 11,477 people serving similar sentences across the whole of Europe, including Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, who calculated the figures, said: "Men, women and children serving open-ended sentences with no certain prospect of release have dramatically increased both in number and as a proportion of the prison population, at a time when straitening public finances sees useful activity being curtailed with prisoners left to spend decades lying on their bunks.

"Rather than engaging these prisoners with real work, or education and training, the government prefers to promote a culture of idleness and a dangerous discontent."

According to the figures there are 5,059 prisoners currently serving indeterminate sentences for public protection (IPP), equal to about 100 new IPP prisoners per month since the sentence was introduced.

Only 47 have been released over the last four years.

"When these thousands of individuals are finally released, as most will be, then society will be left to pick up the pieces," Ms Crook added.

"Urgent sentencing reform is required to recalibrate the system to a realistic vision of what the criminal justice system can and can't do, beginning with the abandonment of the unjust, utterly impractical and grossly expensive indeterminate sentence for public protection."

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