by A father who has served 12 years for stealing a mobile phone under an “inhumane” indefinite prison term has had to be transferred for the twelfth time as he struggles with “an endlessly beautiful prison”.
Thomas White, 40, was this week returned to the prison where he was first jailed under a Public Protection Prisoner (IPP) sentence at HMP Manchester.
In total he has been held at 12 prisons for many years – and is no closer to release.
His family believe he is now “back at square one”, trapped in prison with no plans to help him progress towards release as he struggles with the serious mental health problems he has developed inside.
Meanwhile, campaigners say amendments given Royal Assent this week as part of the Victims and Prisoners Bill to help IPP prisoners on license will do nothing for those who have never been released.
Thomas’s sister Clara White told The Independent: “It’s scary – 12 prisons in 12 years, across Britain, and we’re back at number one at the prison where we started. So it has gone full circle.
“My brother was treated as a Royal Mail courier. This is a man with paranoid schizophrenia.”
She accused the government of being “all talk” when they promised to help IPP prisoners with mental health problems, adding: “They don’t care about the short-term numbers. This system is a shambles and my brother and many others like him are the victims.
“This prison is not about justice – they have failed and forgotten us.”
Although Thomas and his family have not been told the reason for his repeated transfers, Clara suspects that prisons move him on because he cannot progress. “It’s because they can’t move him on in that prison so they think we’re going to have to move him on,” she said. The Independent.
IPP sentences – under which offenders were given a minimum prison term but no maximum – were scrapped in 2012 amid human rights concerns, but the end of the policy did not affect those already sentenced, leaving thousands trapped in prison for years beyond their original prison term. .
Thomas, who had previous convictions for theft, was sentenced to a two-year IPP for robbery just four months before the sentences were suspended. Then aged 27, he was drinking heavily when he took the phone from two Christian missionaries in Manchester.
But thanks to the indefinite prison term, he remains in prison more than 12 years later with little hope of release and is seeking to be transferred to a psychiatric care facility.
He has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which an independent psychiatric report linked to the hopelessness of his IPP sentence.
Over the years he has been held 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, Thomas is locked up for 23 hours a day despite his mental health issues and has no access to essential courses to help IPP prisoners progress to release.
The Independent He called for an immediate review of the nearly 3,000 IPP prisoners like Thomas who are still languishing in prison – 708 of whom have served more than a decade beyond their original sentence.
Last month we revealed details of Thomas’ heartfelt reunion at HMP Garth with his son Kayden, 14, who had been banned from visiting his father in prison for more than a decade.
The reunion was arranged after an intervention by Lord David Blunkett, the architect of the IPP sentence who admits he regrets bringing them in under New Labor in 2005.
After the reunion, his sister Clara said The Independent: “They tortured my brother. They tortured him psychologically, abused his right to family life, and abandoned him for more than ten years.”
The latest prison move comes as major reforms to the release of IPP prisoners were passed into law this week, reducing the license period from ten years to three years as well as a discretionary executive release power for those recalled to prison – to often due to minor breaches of strict license conditions.
Other crucial reforms tabled in the House of Lords to help those who have never been paroled failed after Labor refused to back changes to the parole process.
Campaigners are continuing to call on the new government to exercise sentencing on all IPP sentences, a move recommended by the cross-party justice committee in 2022.
After almost 90 suicides by IPP prisoners, campaigners say the sentence would be a “rescue policy” for those caught under a sentence criticized as “psychological torture” by UN special rapporteur Dr Alice Edwards.
This includes the tragic case – highlighted by The Independent – Scott Rider, who was given a 23 month prison term and committed suicide after spending 17 years in prison.
A spokesman for campaign group UNGRIPP said they were “extremely grateful” for the recent reforms but insisted they would not help those who were never released.
“We have always pushed for sentencing as the only way to truly fix IPP, and we will continue to do this with the new government,” a spokesman said.
Mark Day, deputy director of the Prison Reform Trust, agreed that the changes to the license period were “important and welcome steps in the right direction”.
“But IPP prisoners and their families will rightly feel wronged that the 1,200 IPPs in prison who have never been released have largely been left out of the government’s recommendations,” he said.
“Bolder reforms will be needed to finally eradicate the stigma of the IPP sentence.”
The Ministry of Justice declined to comment due to the pre-election campaign period.
