On a Thursday evening last June, I found myself standing in a packed room in the House of Commons. The space had been turned into a temporary art gallery showcasing work made by a selection of IPP prisoners – the acronym stands for imprisonment for public protection – who had spent years in prison beyond their sentences or remained there, under the terms of the long-abolished indeterminate sentence, which had by then collectively been agreed upon as a point of national disgrace. Much of the art was, unsurprisingly, darkly hued and themed, a mesh of heavy greys and nightmare landscapes.

Donna Mooney – whose brother Tommy Nicol took his own life in prison in 2015, having lost hope of ever being released after serving two extra years over his four-year minimum tariff for a car robbery – had given a short, understated address. Words to the effect that the renewed interest in IPP was welcome, but there were still hundreds of people lingering in prisons across England and Wales. Her speech was greeted with the applause it deserved. I remember noting how impressively cool her performance was, and how hard won that control must have been.

These indeterminate sentences were brought into law in 2005 under the terms of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, having been cooked up in the earliest years of the millennium as part of the broader New Labour crusade to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. The idea was simple enough. An IPP sentence – which carried a minimum but no maximum tariff – could be applied to anyone convicted of one of 96 serious violent or sexual offences, providing the court considered the offender a marked threat to the........

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