How Three IPP Sentences Were Quashed After Nearly 20 Years
Luke Ings and Liam Bennett walked free after close to two decades in custody on minimum terms of two years or less.
Sitting at Wolverhampton Crown Court, Mr Justice Choudhury with magistrate Norma Grant quashed their original indeterminate sentences and held both men entitled to release with no further supervision, in proceedings reported on 7 October 2026 The Guardian. An indeterminate sentence has no fixed end date. After the minimum term, called the tariff, release depends on the Parole Board. James Ward had his indeterminate sentence replaced at the same hearing.
The court substituted determinate, or fixed-length, terms for all three. Bennett received 4 years and 264 days. Ward received 2 years. Ings received 42 months with a 30-month extended licence, a further period of supervision after prison. The court stated Bennett and Ings were entitled to release without further supervision and Ward would no longer be subject to supervision because time already served exceeded the replacement sentences.
Bennett and Ings are both now 38. They were 17 when they committed the offences that led to indeterminate detention. Bennett received a 24-month minimum term in 2007. Ings received a 21-month minimum term in 2006.
The underlying offending was low-level but serious. Bennett was sentenced at Wolverhampton Crown Court in May 2007 after being found guilty of reckless arson for setting fire to items in the loft of an empty council property, and admitting criminal damage and burglary. Ings was sentenced to detention for public protection after admitting offences at East Berkshire youth court in March 2006, including robbery in an underpass and assault on a teenager in a fast food outlet.
Ward's trajectory was different. He is now 41. He was 21 when given a one-year minimum term in 2006 at Leicester Crown Court for arson and criminal damage. He had admitted arson after setting fire to items in his prison cell while serving time for assault. He was released in 2017 after serving 10 years beyond his one-year minimum, was later recalled to prison, and remained in custody until August 2026.
The route back to court was through the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the independent body that can send possible miscarriages of justice back for review. The Commission referred the cases of Ings, Bennett and Ward back to the Crown Court for review. The court found there had been no proper basis for the original finding of dangerousness against the men, the legal test used to justify an indeterminate term. Bennett had unsuccessfully appealed his sentence two years after it was imposed CCRC.
The broader context here is the structure of the sentences themselves. Imprisonment for public protection and detention for public protection sentences were made available in 2005 and abolished in 2012, with the abolition not retrospective. That left tariffs of months to operate as gateways to open-ended detention subject to Parole Board release. Think of the short tariff as a door that only opened onto another locked room. Quashing and resubstitution, as used here, removes the indeterminate framework entirely and replaces it with a fixed term already served. For practitioners, the point to weigh is dangerousness at the point of sentence. Where that assessment lacked a proper basis, extended time in custody and subsequent recall history do not cure the defect.
