The government needs to help prisoners serving indefinite jail terms – not prolong their suffering

Editorial: The justice secretary has defied Parole Board advice by blocking scores of inmates from being transferred to open prisons

The government has blocked 128 inmates trapped by cruel indefinite jail terms from moving to open prisons in the past year. This is only the latest injustice suffered by prisoners who are still serving indefinite sentences 12 years after imprisonment for public protection (IPP) jail terms were abolished in 2012.

Everyone now agrees that indefinite prison sentences were a mistake. They were introduced by the Labour government in 2003 to deal with criminals guilty of serious crimes who might continue to be a danger to the public. They were given a minimum sentence but could be released only if the Parole Board agreed, and could be recalled if they broke the terms of their licence, which could last a lifetime.

These IPP sentences ended up being imposed in more cases, and more trivial cases than David Blunkett, the home secretary who devised the legislation, ever envisaged. Lord Blunkett said earlier this year that the law was his “biggest regret”. He admitted that it had “resulted in deeply damaging outcomes”.

After an adverse ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, the coalition government abolished the sentence – but not for about 3,000 prisoners still serving them. More than 700 offenders, many of them initially imprisoned for relatively minor crimes, have now served 10 years longer than their minimum term.

The Independent has campaigned against this injustice, highlighting cases such as that of James Lawrence, who is still in prison 18 years after he was handed an eight-month jail term; Thomas White, who set himself alight in his cell after serving 12 years for stealing a phone; and Abdullahi Suleman, who is still inside 19 years after he was jailed for a laptop robbery.

In each case, we accept that the Parole Board has found reasons for keeping these people in prison – or for returning them to prison after their release. But the net effect has been that they have been treated more harshly than others originally convicted of similar offences.

We would urge ministers and officials to read the accounts of these prisoners and their families; the sense of hopelessness induced by an indefinite sentence served at the whim – as it seems to them – of a faceless bureaucracy is cruel and unusual.

We had hoped that a change of government would permit a rethink from first principles, unconstrained by the need to defend a policy simply because it has been in place since 2012. Unfortunately, it would seem that Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, feels that she cannot risk being seen as “soft” at a time when she has been forced to operate a policy of early release to ease prison overcrowding.

This is a mistake. The injustice suffered by this category of prisoner is so extreme that it should be ended at once. But even if ministers are taking an ultra-cautious view, they are going too far in overruling the recommendations of the Parole Board that some inmates should be moved to open prisons. As Lord Woodley said: “The government seem happy to hide behind the Parole Board when it suits them, but to ignore their advice when it doesn’t.”

At a time when David Gauke, the former Conservative justice secretary, says that more use should be made of open prisons, it seems perverse to refuse this modest easing of conditions for one group of prisoners who have been treated so unfairly by the criminal justice system.