This must be a turning point in the fight to end indefinite detentions

Editorial: The Criminal Cases Review Commission is right to refer five IPP prisoners to the appeal courts – Vera Baird’s decision must now be a spur to ministers to finally do the right thing

Dame Vera Baird is a doughty champion in the fight against injustice. As chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, she has asked the appeal courts to look at the cases of five men who are serving indefinite sentences for offences committed up to 20 years ago.

All five were under the age of 21 when they were originally sentenced; three of them were teenagers. They were sentenced under the law on imprisonment for public protection – IPP – which was abolished in 2012, although those already serving IPP sentences continued to do so.

Almost unbelievably, 2,400 prisoners are still serving these disproportionate and inhumane sentences 14 years later. The Independent is campaigning for this terrible law to be repealed in full, and for all those still held under it to be released or resentenced on the basis of the same evidence that would apply to any other citizen.

This is not The Independent’s most popular campaign; many of these people did bad things. But they have been treated so very differently from other people who did similarly bad things that the injustice is as great as if they had been locked up for doing nothing.

The IPP law was brought in by the last Labour government, and was intended to apply to a small number of serious offenders who would remain a threat to the public at the end of a “normal” sentence. IPP prisoners have to convince the Parole Board that it is safe to release them, which means that, in effect, they are being asked to prove a negative.

The law was used more frequently than intended, including for some relatively trivial offences. David Blunkett, who introduced it as home secretary, says that it is one of his greatest regrets from his time in government. Many of the judges who passed IPP sentences have said that they made a mistake in doing so.

As John Thomas, the former lord chief justice of England and Wales – whose efforts to close this legal loophole have been tireless – says, the law breaches a fundamental principle, in that it punishes people for what they might do rather than for what they have done. Similarly, Andrea Coomber, chief executive officer of the Howard League for Penal Reform, is to be commended for her work in campaigning for basic rights of justice for what might be termed throw-away-the-key victims.

The five prisoners whose cases have been selected by Dame Vera’s “injustice watchdog” for review by the appeal courts will not automatically escape the Kafkaesque nightmare in which they have been trapped. They were chosen because their cases are similar to those of three people whose IPP sentences have been quashed by the Court of Appeal in the last two years. In those cases, the court held that the sentencing judges had failed to give sufficient weight to the youth and immaturity of the offenders.

Today’s five cases include that of Jay Davis, convicted of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear or violence. He was 19 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to IPP with a minimum term of nine months – and has been in prison for 16 years.

Then there is Luke Ings, who was 17 when he was convicted of robbery and battery. He was given a minimum term of one year and nine months. That, too, was 16 years ago.

Davis, Ings, and the other three now have a good chance that their sentences will be quashed. But this is a slow and piecemeal way to remedy an injustice. These cases are only a few of the most shocking examples of a law that has treated an arbitrary group of offenders differently, and much more severely, than other people guilty of similar crimes.

Detention without a release date, and with inconsistent rules about qualifying for conditional release, is cruel – and, in many cases, damaging to the mental health of these people, who need support as well as punishment.

The decision by Dame Vera’s commission in these five cases must act as a spur to ministers to summon up the courage to finally do the right thing and bring the scandal of indefinite detention to an end.