Even in the midst of an unprecedented prisons crisis there are still people incarcerated with an effective life sentence that they did not deserve.

Many should have been released long ago.

Now Dame Vera Baird, chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has told The Independent of her deep concerns about these continuing injustices, and why people imprisoned under the discredited Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) regime need to have their plight examined much more quickly.

Speaking out for the first time since Andy Burnham ordered an investigation into this scandal, Dame Vera calls for “wholesale” action to review or resentence those involved.

This would be in the interests of both individual justice and in creating space in the cells such that early release can be avoided for far more dangerous criminals.

It is no exaggeration to say that two of the notorious killers of PC Andrew Harper now slated for early release would not now be in the brink of undeserved freedom had the IPP disgrace been ended.

At the moment, the understaffed CCRC is trying to cope with an increasing number of IPP cases, with more than 180 already under review - which is still a small proportion of the 2,400 or so still outstanding.

Reflecting on this intolerable situation Dame Vera asks: “Who could expect that it would last this long and cause so much damage, which I'm afraid it has done…It's very odd that we're left over with a lot of people are still stuck on something that we all accept should never have been implemented.”

Dame Vera’s dedication to the cause is sincere, and her public intervention an unusual and necessary one, but official redress is, as she points out, is long overdue.

This is a mass injustice that has been allowed to fester for an inordinate length of time, and caused, fundamentally, by political complacency born out of public indifference.

This is of course all too true of the criminal justice system more generally. There are always more popular ways to invest public money than in building costly new prisons and paying lawyers to process cases, so it should come as no surprise when the system collapses, as it is doing now.

Although the Conservatives have an especial responsibility for the neglect of more recent times, few ministers have shown much enthusiasm for the challenge to “make prions work”; but they have always readily agreed to calls for longer, harsher sentencing to prove they are “tough on crime”.

Retribution has taken precedence over rehabilitation and economy. It was always absurd that judges should have been able to lock people up indefinitely for any sort of offence, let alone relatively minor ones, simply for an unprovable suspicion that the individual was dangerous.

The IPP provision broke the link that made a punishment for the crime. The terrible consequences of this mistake have been felt ever since.

The IPP regime has destroyed lives needlessly. It was brought in during the Blair administration, when Dame Vera was a Labour MP, and even then sceptical about its usefulness.

A typical IPP case would be of a young man, say in their late teens, jailed in the 2000s, but, perhaps with some periods of failed probation, still serving time for an offence that should have been punished with a determinate sentence, as was the case before and since the disastrous IPP experiment.

If they were sent to prison at the age of 19, say, they have now lost the best years of their lives, and to no great benefit to public safety.

It has taken public outrage and yet another collapse in the prison system to impel a prime minister into acting, but the IPP review ordered by Andy Burnham is no less welcome for that.

The modest investment in the extra resources that Dame Vera and the CCRC need to finish the job swiftly would be repaid many times over.