Towards Reform: Contexts and Challenges of Indefinite Sentences

 By Roger Grimshaw  

This working paper seeks to clarify the key contexts in which the recent history of indefinite detention for people convicted of crimes should be placed and to suggest ways of interpreting the kinds of evidence and analysis which future inquiries or reviews may wish to consider. Here it is argued that the main contexts are, in order of scope and generality: A. Socio-political structures and state developments B. Operations of the state: law and administration C. Initiatives, reactions and effects at the individual level The paper gives most attention to contexts A and B on the grounds that these contain the sources of the fundamental problems to be resolved, while evidence about C continues to be documented. It is agreed that the recent history of indefinite detention is complex, with several strands that over time have become knotted, hindering lucid and effective solutions. In this paper an attempt has been made to identify some of the most convoluted, and to trace their origins and implications. Inevitably, Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) will loom large, though future work will seek lessons from other jurisdictions and from similar sentences. The act of clarification focuses our minds on what is entailed in challenging the conventional wisdom around political and institutional understandings of indeterminate preventive detention. As we shall see, a cluster of such sentences have emerged from a longstanding political context and sit inside a range of measures and technologies which are embedded in criminal justice as we know it. The account is neither reassuring nor redemptive, but its intention is to present a foundation for a cogent criticism of that history and a prospective agenda for a future alternative.

Working Paper 2  London:  Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, 2025. 14p.