He Also Excluded Rapists and Serious Child Sex Offenders From Upcoming Early Release Plans

The review, requested from Justice Secretary Alex Norris, aims to address Britain's prison crisis and free up capacity in overcrowded jails. IPP sentences, scrapped in 2012 but not applied retrospectively, have left around 2,400 people imprisoned, some for minor crimes like stealing a mobile phone, often decades beyond their original tariffs. Writing in The Telegraph, Burnham acknowledged the "anxiety" caused by early release changes but said he wanted to go further, vowing to "fix the prison crisis once and for all.

He also excluded rapists and serious child sex offenders from upcoming early release plans. Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti called ending IPP sentences "a very fitting intervention for a new prime minister offering hope to the hopeless, while Andrea Coomber of the Howard League urged urgent action. Last week, the UN condemned the sentences as "arbitrary" detention and potential "psychological torture, citing mental anguish from uncertainty. The architect of the policy, Lord David Blunkett, has called it his "biggest regret.