Imprisonment for Public Protection prisoners and mental health issues
| DOI | 10.1177/02645505090560010303 |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Author | Emma Cluley |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
priority. Engagement with MAPPA was found to be generally satisfactory although
problems were encountered with co-ordinating community meetings. While some
victim awareness work was being undertaken, it was an area that was identified
as an ‘under developed’ (p. 12) part of sentence planning during the custodial
period of sentences.
The report identifies five improvements for the London area including that
sentence planning meetings are to be held with all offenders that fall into the
OMM and that the meetings are attended by relevant staff, and there should be
greater contact between the offender supervisor and the offender. A diversity impact
assessment of the implementation of the OMM was recommended as necessary
by all prisons. Three recommendations for improvement were identified to be
applied nationally across the two services: (a) Timely completion of initial OASys
assessments on offenders that are within the OMM model; (b) OMs to contribute
to the sentence planning process with custody as sent out in NOMS guidance; and
(c) that more use is made of video-link and telephone conferencing by both prison
and probation to support the sentence OM process.
Two areas of good practice were identified during the inspection. First, positive
offender engagement was undertaken at one prison, where priority was given to
interviewing prisoners promptly who had been recalled, in order to re-engage
them with their sentence. Second, another prison developed constructive links with
neighbouring boroughs PPO schemes and had effective systems for integrating
the custodial and community elements of sentence planning.
Offender Management Inspection – A Joint Inspection by HMP Inspectorate of
Probation and Prisons, A Report on Offender Management Arrangements in
Custodial Institutions in London (September 2008) can be downloaded from
http://inspectorates.homeoffice.gov.uk/hmiprobation/
Emma Cluley
Greater Manchester Probation Area
Imprisonment for Public Protection prisoners and
mental health issues
Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) is a sentence available to the Courts and
was implemented in 2005 following the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act
2003. IPP is an indeterminate sentence that can imposed by the Court for serious
offences and where the Court deem the offender to be ‘dangerous’ (p. 15). There
has been far greater use of the sentence than forecast and this has created signi-
ficant implications for prison and probation services. This report considers the
specific implications with regard to mental health issues and IPPs. The research
included 55 interviews with IPP male prisoners across three prisons in England and
Wales along with previously unpublished government data for more than 2200 IPP
prisoners, including access to Offender Assessment System (OASys) assessments.
IPP sentences include a tariff that is proportionate to the index offence and an
IPP prisoner is eligible for parole once the tariff date has been reached. In July
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