THE government has rejected MPs’ calls for thousands of prisoners detained indefinitely to be resentenced, in a move described as inhumane and indefensible.

The Commons justice committee said in a report last year that people still behind bars under the now abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) scheme should have their cases reviewed. 

IPP sentences were scrapped in 2012. However, this abolition was not applied retrospectively, and almost 3,000 people remain locked up in England and Wales after receiving such a sentence.

Justice committee chairman Bob Neill described the government’s decision as a “missed opportunity to right a wrong.” 

“There is now a growing consensus that a resentencing exercise is the only way to comprehensively address the injustice of IPP sentences and that this can be done without prejudicing public protection,” he said. 

The sentences were introduced in 2005 to indefinitely detain serious offenders who were perceived to be a risk to the public. 

But they were scrapped less than a decade later after it was found they were being applied too widely, including for offenders who committed low-level crimes. 

Howard League for Penal Reform chief executive Andrea Coomber KC said the decision will “extend the suffering” of IPP prisoners. 

Social justice charity Nacro said the sentences are a cruel and unusual punishment. 

“To not review the sentences of the 3,000 people still held on these sentences, with their lives in perpetual limbo, is inhumane,” Nacro’s chief executive Campbell Robb said. 

Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said the government had rejected resentencing as it “could lead to the immediate release of many offenders who have been assessed as unsafe for release by the Parole Board, many with no period of supervision in the community.”