Case Study Of Harms Surrounding Imprisonment For Public Protection In England And Wales

Harms surrounding Imprisonment for Public Protection in England and Wales

Introduction

Sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) were introduced under the Criminal Justice Act in 2003 and implemented in England and Wales in 2005. It consists of an indeterminate sentence imposed by the Court for serious offences and in cases where the Court ‘deem the offender to be dangerous’ and pose a significant risk to the public (Cluely, 2009:73). There are many implications of IPP sentencing including the restriction of freedom and control over specific demographics due to stigmas as well as the harms of living in a society dominated by surveillance. This case study aims to examine how IPP sentencing affected the lives of prisoners both during

Where the old penology was concerned with moral sensibility and treatment of the offender through diagnosis, the new penology consists of ‘techniques to identify, classify and manage groupings sorted by dangerousness’ (Feeley and Simon, 1992:452). This criminological concept introduces a language of probability and risk for determining the likelihood of crime in specific demographic using actuarial justice. Kemshall (2011:223) defines actuarial justice as a form of ‘risk assessment’ to make predictions about a population’s risk of engaging in offending behaviour using statistics. It is used to predict the possibility of re-offending within a certain time frame and is implemented within IPP sentencing to determine the offender’s ‘risk’ level and use it to imprison them. Using actuarial justice to put away offenders is unjust because their ‘risk’ level is based on the re-offending statistics of an entire population. It has been criticised for lack of accuracy and potential discrimination against certain groups of people. This ideology of the new penology generalising specific populations, branding them as ‘deviant’ or ‘dangerous’, is not ‘new’ thinking. Newburn (2017) defines the Chicago School of Thought which encompasses the concept of patterns of deviant behaviour in certain areas because of subcultures within populations. This school of thought studies the working class in Chicago and suggests such individuals were closely monitored and controlled because they were considered ‘dangerous’ or a potential ‘risk’ to society. This Marxist ideology of the working-class society being seen as a threat is the type of toxic thinking included within IPP