A father who served 12 years for stealing a mobile phone under an “inhumane” indefinite prison sentence has been forced to move prison for the twelfth time as he struggles with an endless “prison merry-go-round”.
Thomas White, 40, was returned to prison this week where he was jailed for the first time under a Public Protection Order (IPP) at HMP Manchester.
In total, he has now served twelve prisons in twelve years – and he is no closer to being released.
His family believes he is now “back to square one,” locked in a prison with no courses that can help him move forward toward his release, while he struggles with serious mental health issues he developed while there.
Meanwhile, campaigners say reforms granted by royal assent this week as part of the Victims and Prisoners Bill to help licensed IPP prisoners will do nothing for those who have never been released.
Thomas’ sister Clara White told it The independent: “It’s shocking – twelve prisons in twelve years, all over Britain, and we’re back to where we started. So it’s round.
“My brother has been treated like a Royal Mail parcel. This is a man with paranoid schizophrenia.”
She accused the government of being “all talk” when it promised to help IPP prisoners with mental health problems, adding: “They only care about the short-term numbers. This system is a mess and my brother and many others like him are the victims.
“This prison merry-go-round is not what justice is about – they have failed and forgotten us.”
Although Thomas and his family were never given the reason for his repeated transfers, Clara suspects that the prisons transferred him because he cannot make progress. “It’s because they can’t move him any further in the prison, so they think we should move him,” she said. The independent.
IPP sentences – which gave offenders a minimum prison sentence but no maximum – were scrapped in 2012 due to human rights concerns, but the abolition of the policy did not affect those already convicted, leaving thousands of years in prison after their original prison sentence. .
Thomas, who had previously been convicted of theft, was given an IPP sentence with a two-year prison sentence for theft, just four months before the sentences were banned. At 27, he had had too much to drink when he answered the phone from two Christian missionaries in Manchester.
But thanks to the indefinite prison sentence, he remains in prison more than twelve years later, with little hope of release as his family calls for him to be taken to a psychiatric care facility.
He has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which an independent psychiatric report says is linked to the hopelessness of his IPP sentence.
Over the years he has served time in prisons across the country, including HMP Chelmsford in Essex and HMP Swaleside on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent – almost 300 miles from his family.
Now back at HMP Manchester, despite his mental health problems, Thomas is locked up 23 hours a day and cannot access the required courses to help IPP prisoners with their release.
The independent has called for an immediate review of nearly 3,000 IPP prisoners like Thomas who are still languishing in prison – 708 of whom have served more than a decade longer than their original sentences.
Last month we revealed details of Thomas’ heartfelt reunion at HMP Garth with his son Kayden, 14, who has been banned from visiting his father in prison for more than a decade.
The reunion came about after an intervention by Lord David Blunkett, the architect of the IPP punishment, who admits he regrets introducing them under New Labor in 2005.
After the reunion, his sister Clara told him The independent: “They tortured my brother. They psychologically tortured him and abused his right to a family life, and they got away with it for more than a decade.”
The latest move in the prison comes as major reforms for released IPP prisoners came into effect this week, reducing the licensing period from ten to three years, as well as providing a discretionary power to release the executive for those sent to the prison are recalled – often for minor breaches of strict licensing conditions.
However, other crucial reforms tabled in the House of Lords to help those never released were unsuccessful after Labor refused to back changes to the parole process.
Campaigners continue to call on the new government to implement a sentencing exercise for all IPP sentences, a move recommended by the cross-party justice commission in 2022.
After nearly 90 suicides by IPP prisoners, campaigners say recidivism would be a “life-saving policy” for those jailed under a sentence recommended by UN Special Rapporteur Dr. Alice Edwards has been condemned as “psychological torture”.
This also applies to the tragic case – highlighted by The independent – of Scott Rider, who was given a 23-month prison sentence and committed suicide in despair after serving 17 years in prison.
A spokesperson for campaign group UNGRIPP said they were “extremely grateful” for the recent reforms, but stressed they would not help those who were never released.
“We have always insisted that imposing punitive measures is the only way to truly resolve IPP, and we will continue to do so with the new administration,” a spokesperson said.
Mark Day, deputy chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, agreed that the licensing reforms were “important and welcome steps in the right direction”.
“But IPP prisoners and their families will rightly feel aggrieved that the 1,200 IPPs in prison who have never been released have been largely left out of the government’s proposals,” he added.
“Stronger reforms will be needed to finally eradicate the stain on the IPP verdict.”
The Justice Department declined to comment due to the campaign period leading up to the election.