Luke Ings and Liam Bennett freed after court replaces indefinite sentences

Luke Ings and Liam Bennett became entitled to release on Wednesday, 7 October, after a court in Wolverhampton, England, quashed their indefinite sentences and imposed shorter replacements. The court also replaced the sentence of James Ward, who had been released in August, ending his supervision. The decision resolves the three men’s appeals but leaves other imprisonment for public protection sentences in force.

The ruling followed referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. At Wolverhampton Crown Court, Mr Justice Choudhury and magistrate Norma Grant replaced Bennett’s sentence with four years and 264 days, Ings’s with 42 months and a 30-month extended licence, and Ward’s with two years. All three had already spent longer in custody than their replacement terms required, according to the Guardian’s account of the hearing.

What the court changed for Ings, Bennett and Ward

The Guardian reported that Ings and Bennett, both 38, had each spent about two decades in custody. Their original minimum terms were 21 months and 24 months respectively. A minimum term under an indefinite sentence was not a guaranteed release date: their cases illustrate how much longer detention could last. Choudhury told the men they had spent considerably longer in custody than the replacement sentences, the Guardian reported.

The judge said Bennett and Ings were entitled to release without further supervision, while Ward would no longer be subject to supervision. Although Ings’s replacement sentence included an extended licence period, the court’s reported direction was that he, like Bennett, could leave without further supervision. Ward had already left custody in August; Wednesday’s decision changed the legal sentence and supervision governing him.

Ward received a one-year minimum term for arson and criminal damage in 2006, when he was 21. The Guardian reported that he was released in 2017, ten years beyond that minimum, then recalled to prison. He remained in custody until August 2026. His case shows why the court’s decision concerned supervision as well as time already served.

Why the original indefinite sentences were challenged

The three men argued that the original sentencing judges had wrongly found them dangerous or had failed to consider other sentences, according to the Guardian. Bennett’s lawyer argued that the judge who sentenced him did not give proper weight to his youth, maturity and capacity to change after a difficult childhood. The appeal court found no proper basis for the original finding that Bennett was dangerous.

The Guardian reported that the sentences, known as imprisonment for public protection and detention for public protection, became available in 2005 for offenders considered a significant risk to the public. Courts stopped imposing them in new cases after their abolition in 2012. That change did not cancel sentences already handed down, so people sentenced under the former rules could continue to be held or recalled after release.

How many people remain under IPP sentences

Ministry of Justice figures counted 2,271 people in custody under imprisonment for public protection sentences on 30 June 2026. Of those, 856 had not yet been released and 1,415 had been recalled after release. The figures are a snapshot from June, more than three months before the Wolverhampton ruling, and should not be read as a count for the day of the hearing.

Among the 856 people who had never been released, only three had not reached the end of their minimum term, according to the ministry. Around eight in ten of those whose minimum term had expired had been held at least ten years beyond it. Compared with a year earlier, the unreleased population had fallen 12% and the recalled population 6%. Those national figures describe a wider continuing system; Wednesday’s court decision changed the sentences of the three appellants only.

The ruling establishes an immediate outcome for Bennett and Ings and ends Ward’s supervision. It does not determine whether another person serving an imprisonment for public protection sentence will be resentenced or released. Any wider effect would need to be established through other cases or a change in law; the available court reporting does not establish one.