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A Bolton father who is on the run after learning he was to be indefinitely locked up in prison has appealed to the justice secretary to intervene in his case directly.
Matthew Booth, 33, has already served his minimum jail term more than three times over for a crime he committed when he was just 15.
He is now wanted by police on recall to prison, having been convicted under the indefinite Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentencing system – which means he can be recalled without notice for breaches of his strict license conditions.
Mr Booth was recalled on the accusation of having restarted a relationship with the mother of his two children without notifying probation officers.
Both Mr Booth and the woman in question – Abigail Vernon, the mother of his two daughters – told The Independent in October that claims they were back in a serious relationship were not true.
He has now issued a direct appeal to justice secretary Shabana Mahmood to involve herself in the case, offering to hand himself in to authorities if she were to support his case.
Speaking to The Guardian, Mr Booth said: “[She] could make sure I don’t go straight back to prison again. If she said that, I would hand myself in straight away.”
“For now, I am going to live on my own, send Christmas cards to my children and see how long I can stand the cold. Some days I have got every intention of handing myself in to the police station. But it’s a hard thing to do. It is traumatising.”
Mr Booth and Ms Vernon are being supported by the IPP Committee in Action, a campaign group fighting the IPP sentences imposed between 2005 and 2012.
The sentences were widely condemned, including by the UN – but when they were scrapped in 2012, this was not done retrospectively.
Mr Booth was handed an IPP for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after hitting someone with a brick over the head when he was aged 15, while protecting a friend in a fight. In a later fight, he jumped on someone’s head.
Judges said he must serve a minimum of two years and seven months at his sentencing, when he was 16.
Mr Booth told The Independent in October: “It was my first custodial sentence. I needed help, not a life sentence.”
He served six years before his first release in 2013. In 2018, he was convicted of criminal damage and sentenced to eight weeks – but served seven months after returning straight to prison as a result of his IPP sentence.
Mr Booth was later recalled to prison twice, after arrests for which he was not charged.
“I am getting recalled every single time for no charges, no crime,” he said. “How am I doing years because someone said something about me?
“I can’t do it. I can’t go there again and miss my children and not see my kids from inside prison. And just because they think I’m in a relationship – why should I do two years?”
He said the jail term made him feel like “I have got not hope at all”.
“It’s ruined my life,” he continued. “Every time I get out and I try and build something it gets taken away again. I miss my kids.
“My mental health is seriously bad. I am worried about everything right now.”
There are 2,734 IPP prisoners still imprisoned, with 1,602 of them having been recalled. More than 700 have served more than 10 years longer than their minimum term.
At least 90 people have taken their own lives in prison while serving the jail term, and an estimated further 30 suicides have taken place in the community.
A spokesperson for HM Prison and Probation Service told The Guardian: “Offenders released on licence are subject to strict conditions and, as the public would rightly expect, they are recalled to prison if there are concerns for the safety of those in the community.”
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