Thomas White, a 43-year-old father who has spent over 14 years in prison for drunkenly stealing a mobile phone, has been returned to a category B prison after receiving just nine months of treatment at a medium secure psychiatric hospital.
White was admitted to the hospital last November following a six-year family campaign to secure medical help. His transfer came after interventions from Lord Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, and Lord Timpson, the former Prisons Minister. His sister, Pastor Clara White, fears his mental health will rapidly deteriorate without a release date, saying: "So his torture starts all over again."
Decade-Long Sentence
White was handed an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence in 2012 for the street robbery of a mobile phone, with a two-year tariff. The sentence was abolished just four months later, but not retrospectively, leaving more than 2,200 people still detained under it today.
He has now served more than seven times his original tariff. In 2024, he was granted permission to reunite with his son, Kayden, after being banned from seeing him since the boy was nine months old. Their reunion took place when Kayden was 14.
Mental Health Decline
White developed paranoid schizophrenia while serving his indefinite sentence, and an independent psychiatrist concluded that his imprisonment was the "probable cause of his illness." Before his hospital transfer, he was held at HMP Manchester, where reports reached his family that he was jumping onto wing safety netting, attempting to break his legs through cell bars, smashing his face against the floor and trying to set fire to himself.
In 2016, while at HMP Norwich, he began speaking in Roman numerals during calls home and was reportedly seen walking the wing wrapped in a bedsheet, presenting himself as Jesus Christ.
Campaign for Change
Pastor White said: "When Thomas was moved to hospital, we finally felt a small sense of hope. After years of watching him deteriorate in prison, he was finally somewhere designed to provide care rather than punishment. Now, after just nine months, he is being sent back into the very system that made him ill. This will be Thomas' fifteenth prison. Fifteen prisons in fourteen years."
She added: "My brother has served more than seven times the punishment that the court originally considered appropriate. He is a severely unwell man who needs treatment, stability and hope. Instead, he is being sent back to prison with no release date and no certainty about what his future holds. Andy Burnham's pledge to resolve the IPP injustice is a welcome first step but we now need a clear timeline and plan from the government."
The move comes despite Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledging that the UK Government would be "finally grasping the nettle" to resolve the IPP injustice. James Daly, then Conservative MP for Bury North, told the House of Commons in 2023: "If Thomas had been sentenced four months later, he would not be in prison now."
The United Nations has described the sentence as causing severe psychological harm and recently found that the continued detention of several IPP prisoners amounted to arbitrary detention. Since the sentence was introduced, 96 IPP prisoners have taken their own lives in custody. Campaigners estimate that more than £145 million of taxpayers' money was spent detaining IPP prisoners in 2024 alone, with the total cost since abolition exceeding £1.6 billion.
White has been transferred 14 times in over 14 years, so has never been given a realistic opportunity to complete rehabilitation programmes required to secure release. A growing number of politicians, legal experts, campaigners and former ministers have called for a resentencing exercise to end what many describe as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the British justice system.
