Latest news with #AlexChalk
The Independent
14-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Former justice secretary says indefinite jail terms ‘unfair'
Former Justice Secretary Alex Chalk KC has urged his successor Shabana Mahmood to carefully consider fresh proposals to end 'unfair' indefinite Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences. Over 2,500 inmates remain trapped under IPP sentences, which were abolished in 2012 but not retrospectively, leading to some serving up to 22 times their original tariff. Mr Chalk previously implemented reforms reducing the IPP licence period from 10 years to three, resulting in almost 1,800 licence terminations. New proposals from the Howard League for Penal Reform and Lord John Thomas suggest giving remaining IPP prisoners a release date within a two-year window at their next Parole Board review. Mr Chalk supports careful consideration of these proposals, potentially with additional safeguards like tagging, while the government has said it will also consider the recommendations.
The Independent
13-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
It's beyond time to end the scandal of IPP
It comes to something when a senior member of a recent government – the former justice secretary, no less – describes actions by the state that were part of his remit as 'overbearing, unfair and almost totalitarian'. Yet this is how Alex Chalk KC, who held that office for 14 months in the government of Rishi Sunak, describes imprisonment for public protection (IPP) orders – which can keep someone in prison indefinitely after conviction for a relatively minor crime. Ousted from government by his party's defeat at the last election, and also from his parliamentary seat, Mr Chalk has returned to his legal practice. It is from this perch that he is now asking his successor, Shabana Mahmood, to consider new proposals – from the Howard League and a former lord chief justice, Lord Thomas – with a view to righting this now longstanding wrong. At The Independent, we make no apology for returning once again to the iniquity of IPP orders that go against so much of what should constitute any civilised judicial system. Two features stand out. There is the glaring disproportionality in so many cases between the crime and the punishment, with some prisoners having served almost 20 years (and still counting) for offences such as robbing someone of their mobile phone or laptop. This is not, by the way, to diminish such crimes, but to point up the disparity between the standard tariff for such a conviction and the actual time served by many of those still subject to IPP orders. The other feature is the cruelty of imposing a sentence that has no end, which has been described by the UN as psychological torture. With no prospect of a release date, more than 90 such prisoners have taken their own lives. Altogether, more than 2,500 are still languishing in jail on IPPs. This is in spite of these indefinite prison terms having been abolished in 2012, just seven years after they were introduced. The clear mistake then was not to have made the abolition retrospective. It applied only to new convictions, not to those already in jail, leaving the glaring injustice that one day could make a difference between someone left to serve what could become a lifetime sentence and someone convicted of a similar crime with a clear idea of the timetable for release or parole. The failure to make abolition of IPP orders retrospective has had consequences of its own. At least some of those still not released are now so damaged by their experience and will be so hard to rehabilitate that they could indeed present a danger to society if they were released. This is the very opposite of what a penal system should set out to achieve and amounts, in Mr Chalk's words, to nothing less than a failure on the part of the state. At which point, there is an obvious and not unreasonable question for the former justice secretary to answer. If the injustices and perverse effects of IPP orders were so apparent when he came to office – as they were – why did he not do something about it? Why did he not condemn the policy in the same terms as he is doing now and make the changes he is demanding be made by his successor? Part of his answer is that he did do something. He reduced from 10 to three the number of years that a released IPP prisoner was on licence and so subject to recall. That is not nothing, but it was nothing like enough. Two small pleas might also be made on his behalf in mitigation. As he says, there was 'not a single vote' in even the change in the licence period that he made, because of the general lack of public sympathy for prisoners. As he does not say – but is a sentiment with which the current government could well concur – a year can be too short a time in UK politics when it comes to getting anything done. The ponderous nature of the legislative process can be a minus as well as a plus. On the other hand, the size of the Labour government's majority and the years it still has to run mean it has time on its side. After more than a decade of political foot-dragging around IPP orders, however, there is no time to lose. The proposals from the Howard League and Lord Thomas show how this could be done, and offer sufficient safeguards for the public in terms of conditions for those who may be released and a new drive to rehabilitate those still considered a danger to society. At a time when other prisoners are being released ahead of schedule to free up scarce cell space, and the Exchequer needs every penny of saving it can get, it makes no sense at all to keep IPP prisoners inside any longer than the public's safety requires. As Alex Chalk says of the one reform he did make, this may not win a single vote, but it would be the right thing to do. Indeed it is – and the sooner it is done, the better.
The Independent
13-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Scandal of indefinite jail terms has left prisoners damaged by ‘state's failure', ex-justice secretary warns
The scandal of ' totalitarian' indefinite jail terms has left prisoners profoundly damaged by the 'state's failure' to rehabilitate them, a former Tory justice secretary has warned. Alex Chalk KC said Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) jail terms are 'overbearing' and 'unfair' as he urged his successor Shabana Mahmood to look carefully at fresh proposals to end the historic wrong. In a candid interview after leaving government a year ago, he described the abolished jail terms as a 'state overreach' which have left thousands languishing in prison for up to 22 times longer than their original tariff. He told The Independent and the podcast Trapped: The IPP Scandal: 'If you take the time to explain to people how the state has got things wrong and that this is a state overreach, and that ultimately it has acted in a way which is overbearing, unfair and almost totalitarian, then I think that offends against most British people's sense of justice.' More than 2,500 inmates are still trapped under the outlawed jail terms, which have been described by the UN as 'psychological torture'. They were abolished in 2012, but not retrospectively, leaving those already jailed incarcerated indefinitely. Victims of the scandal, whose tragic cases have been highlighted by The Independent, include: Leroy Douglas, who has served almost 20 years for robbing a mobile phone; Thomas White, 42, who set himself alight in his cell and has served 13 years for stealing a phone; and Abdullahi Suleman, 41, who is still inside 19 years after he was jailed for a laptop robbery. Mr Chalk, 48, a barrister who first encountered the sentence when he was prosecuting cases in the criminal courts, said he tried to address the 'toxic legacy' of the jail terms when he ushered in changes by reducing the IPP licence period from 10 years to three. Almost 1,800 people have had their licence terminated in the community following his reforms, passed under the Victims and Prisoners Act before last year's general election. He said that although many had committed serious offences, whether you consider yourself a 'bleeding heart' or 'tough on crime', the jail term 'offends against people's sense of fairness in Britain'. 'There is not a single vote in taking that 10-year minimum period for an IPP down to three years,' he said. 'A, because most people don't understand it and B, insofar as they do understand it there is no sympathy for those individuals. 'But I did it because I thought it was right. I did it because I thought it was right and I'm absolutely sure it was the right thing to do.' However, while in Rishi Sunak's government, Mr Chalk stopped short of accepting recommendations from the justice committee that all IPP prisoners should be resentenced. The decision was branded 'not good enough' by campaigners after 94 IPP prisoners have taken their own lives as they lose hope of ever being released. He warned that Ms Mahmood has a tough problem to solve as she considers fresh proposals from the Howard League for Penal Reform and former top judge Lord John Thomas to end the injustice by giving prisoners a release date at their next review by the Parole Board within a two-year window. He admitted some prisoners who are automatically freed from regular, determinate jail terms would not pass the Parole Board's release test, but this is still demanded of all IPP prisoners. In some cases, he believes their long-term incarceration is what has made them too dangerous to pass this test. He said: 'So the injustice can be framed as follows: that you have people who were considered dangerous, but for whom there was hope for rehabilitation some 10, 15, 20 years ago, and yet the experience of being in custody, of having languished under these unfair orders, has for some turned them into extremely volatile and dangerous people. 'And so the exam question is, how do you right this historic wrong without leading innocent members of the public to pay the price for the state's failure?' He continued: 'The wickedness of it is, as I say, the state is very much part of why they are too dangerous. So what do you do? Well, I think that the proposal that the Howard League and Lord Thomas have come up with is certainly worthy of careful consideration.' Although he would be 'twitchy' about agreeing to a release date for remaining IPP prisoners within a two-year window, Mr Chalk 'wouldn't rule it out' if it came with additional safeguards such as tagging and enhanced monitoring. This would ensure prisoners were 'guided, as it were, not to a cliff edge from custody to freedom but much more of a glide path towards a rehabilitated future', he said. However he backed the Howard League's calls for fewer IPP prisoners to be recalled for minor breaches of licence conditions, agreeing that the threshold is currently 'too low'. 'Our duty as the state is to throw all the resources we can at making this person better to try to get them to stand on their own two feet to lead a law-abiding life, and that is our obligation,' he added. The Howard League's proposals were put together by a panel of Britain's top justice experts led by Lord Thomas, who served as lord chief justice from 2013 to 2017. The ex-judge, who is a member of the House of Lords, believes the 'practical solutions' could be the last chance to help those on the jail term, warning that without action some IPP prisoners will languish in jail until they die. Urging the state to take responsibility for its own mistakes, he insisted 'enough is enough', noting that if these prisoners had committed their crime a day after the sentence was abolished, they would have long been freed. 'It is time to address this problem in the way we have set out, which produces justice and minimises risk as much as possible,' added the judge, who last year backed The Independent 's campaign to review IPP sentences. The government has said ministers will 'carefully consider' the Howard League's recommendations. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: 'It is right that IPP sentences were abolished. IPP prisoners are considered for release by the independent Parole Board every two years and those who are deemed safe will be released. 'The government is supporting IPP prisoners to achieve their release but this must be done in a way that does not put the public at risk."
Telegraph
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The Daily T: Can We Be Great Again? Jeremy Hunt on how to solve mass migration
Is it actually possible to solve the problem of mass migration? And more specifically, that of illegal migration? It's the policy issue that continues to sink successive governments - but Jeremy Hunt thinks he has the answer. Along with Camilla Tominey, Jeremy is joined by former Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Alex Chalk, and Director of the Migration Observatory, Madeleine Sumption to put his ideas for solving the problem to the test. In this episode of The Daily T, Hunt admits that the Conservative party failed on immigration when they were in government, and that the issue was 'problematic in lots of Conservative seats' at the last general election, but also insists that 'Labour will bitterly regret cancelling the Rwanda scheme'. As well as outlining his case for international laws and treaties to be rewritten in order to fix the current 'intolerable situation', the former chancellor also makes the point that the people most concerned about uncontrolled immigration are actually immigrants themselves, that they're 'proud to be British' and don't like the idea that 'British hospitality is being abused'. In this special Daily T series inspired by his new book, Jeremy Hunt pitches his optimism and ideas to leading experts on how the UK can change the world for the better. From mass migration to leading the AI revolution, we ask, can we be great again? Can We Be Great Again?: Why a Dangerous World Needs Britain, by Jeremy Hunt (Swift Press, £25), is out now. Click here to order Watch episodes of the Daily T here. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
