Dad jailed for 20 years for stealing a mobile phone is finally about to be released
A man who has been incarcerated for two decades after stealing a friend’s mobile phone is set to be released within weeks.
Leroy Douglas was just 24 when he targeted his friend in Cardiff, Wales back in December 2005.
The incident occurred in the city’s railway station and ended with Douglas stealing his mobile phone.
However, this would be the last of his string of convictions of a similar nature after he was imprisoned for the crime indefinitely.
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According to a petition created by family, Douglas was incarcerated on a discredited Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) jail term, which was abolished by the UK government in 2012.
An IPP sentence is handed to ‘dangerous’ individuals whose crimes do not ‘warrant’ a life sentence, per Prison Reform Trust.
It allegedly includes the ‘detention in prison for a potentially unlimited period until the person can prove that they are no longer a threat to the public.’
According to the Independent, Douglas has been involved in 36 prison transfers and years of not knowing when he would be released as the petition claims he needed to complete two more reform courses before that could be possible.
However, Natalie, Douglas’s sister, revealed on her Change.org page that the courses were not available at the prison he was held in.
She wrote at the time: “My brother Leroy was sentenced to Two year tariff for Street robbery aged 22 in feb 2006 (no violence was used he had took a mobile phone off the victim) yet my brother Leroy is still incarcerated all these years later as the Indeterminate sentence for the protection of the public (IPP) was added.”
She added: “The IPP sentence has no date of release so Leroy will never know when he will be released. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. Leroy is a C Cat prisoner in a B Cat prison being held where the most serious of offenders are kept, Leroy has two more rehabilitative courses to complete yet these couses are not available in the prison that he is being held. Untill these courses are completed Leroy will never be released."
Now 44, 12 years after the petition was created, Douglas has been told he will go home soon after a parole board approved his release weeks before the UK’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced he would reform IPP jail terms.
It also comes from the back of the United Nations (UN) opinion that IPP sentences are unlawful.
As for Douglas, this news has finally ended years of uncertainty about his future.
However, it does mean he’ll have missed 20 years of his daughter’s life and wasn’t there for the 2021 death of his other daughter.
“I’ve been waiting for this day for the past 20 years,” Douglas told The Independent from his place in prison at the HMP Erlestoke, in Wiltshire.
In October, he will be transferred to a hostel.
“I’ve never stopped fighting for my release. Freedom should have come to me ages ago, to be honest, because I’m not dangerous; I only stole a phone, with no violence, with just the threat of force, which led to me staying in jail 20 years,” he said.
In a message to the UK government, Douglas said the Prime Minister should ‘free up the damn IPP inmates who are human beings, not dogs.’
“Most of us haven’t committed crimes for over 10 years, yet still the government tries to portray us as some danger to the public. Most have been so traumatised that they now have psychological or psychiatric problems and need more help than when they first went away,” he claimed.
Douglas was supposed to serve a minimum of two years and six months for the theft of the phone, but was repeatedly refused parole because of his disruptive behavior inside.
But in 2020, he was additionally given a five-week sentence for money laundering.
Once released, he’ll have to comply with strict conditions, such as maintaining a curfew, a known address, being monitored by a GPS tag and tested for drugs, as well as more.
Britt Jones