IPP prisoner reunited with teenage son after 12 years

Thomas White was jailed in 2012 for stealing a mobile phone

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

A father who has languished in prison for more than 12 years under an abolished indefinite jail term for stealing a mobile phone has been reunited with his son for the first time. Thomas White, 40, had been banned from prison visits with his only child Kayden, now 14, since being handed a controversial IPP (imprisonment for public protection) sentence.

The father and son have finally shared an emotional reunion following an intervention by David Blunkett, the architect of the IPP sentence, who now admits he regrets introducing it. Speaking exclusively to The Independent after his first visit, Kayden revealed that he dreams of the pair going fishing together if his father is ever freed.

The schoolboy admitted he was a bag of nerves because he did not remember his father, who was jailed indefinitely when the teen was just a baby.

Kayden said: “I was very nervous meeting my dad as I didn’t remember him from a baby. In the visiting room I sat and waited, and asked my nanny if each man with black hair was my dad, as I’ve only seen pictures of my dad from lots of years ago. It didn’t feel like I met somebody new – maybe because my dad has rung me every day since I was little.”

IPP sentences – under which offenders were given a minimum jail term but no maximum – were scrapped in 2012 amid human rights concerns, but the abolition of the policy did not affect those already sentenced, leaving thousands trapped in jail for years beyond their original prison term.