Legal background Sentence for Offenders of Particular Concern
The SOPC was introduced in the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 in England and Wales and must be imposed upon offenders aged over 18 who have committed a terrorist or sexual offence specified in Schedule 13 of the Sentencing Code, in circumstances where the court finds that neither the seriousness threshold for applying a life sentence, nor the dangerousness threshold for applying an EDS, have been met (section 278 of the Sentencing Code).
	Under section 244A of the 2003 Act, all non-terrorist offenders serving a SOPC are considered for early release by the Board from the half-way point. The release provisions for SOPCs for terrorist offenders were amended by the TORER Act 2020 so they cannot be considered for release before the two-thirds point of their custodial sentence. All SOPC offenders, whether terrorist or non-terrorist, must be released at the end of their custodial term and are subject to a further 12-month licence period to manage the assessed risk the offender poses.