Wrongfully Convicted?
That'll Be £80,000 Please
By Neil Mackay
Home Affairs Editor
The Sunday Herald - UK
3-14-4

What do you give someone who's been proved innocent after spending the best
part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn't
commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you're David
Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a
big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent
freeloading at Her Majesty's Pleasure in British prisons.

On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for
the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for
every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the
innocent man shouldn't have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping
for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

Blunkett's fight has been described as "outrageous", "morally repugnant" and
the "sickest of sick jokes", but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it's a
completely "reasonable course of action" as the innocent men and women would
have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren't in prison.
The government deems the claw-back 'Saved Living Expenses'.

Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for
the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his
wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £50,000 for
living expenses by the Home Office.

It wasn't until two years ago that Hill was finally awarded £960,000 in
compensation. However, during the years since his release, while waiting for
the pay-out, the government had given him advances of around £300,000. When
his compensation came through, the £300,000 was taken back along with interest
on the interim payments charged at 23% - that cost him a further £70,000.

"The whole system is absurd," Hill said. "I'm so angry about what has happened
to me. I try and tell people about being charged for bed and board in jail and
they can't believe it.

"When I left prison I was given no training for freedom - no counselling or
psychological preparation. Yet the guilty get that when they are released. To
charge me for the food I ate and the cell I slept in is almost as big an
injustice as fitting me up in the first place.

"While I was in prison, my family lost their home, yet they get no
compensation. But the state wants its money back. It's like being kicked in
the head when someone has beat you already.

"I have to put up with this, yet there has not been one police officer
convicted of fitting people up. The Home Office had no shortage of money to
keep me in jail or to run a charade of a trial.

"But they had enough money to frame me. Nevertheless, when it comes to paying
out compensation for ruining my life they happily rip me to shreds."

Hill is not leading the legal action against the government - instead he has
handed the baton to another high-profile victim of miscarriage of justice:
Mike O'Brien.

O'Brien spent 10 years in jail wrongly convicted of killing a Cardiff
newsagent. His baby daughter died while he was in prison and he was charged
£37,500 by the Home Office for his time behind bars.

Hill said he cannot lead the legal fight as the Birmingham Six have fought
every legal action together, but now three of them are over 70 and Hill
believes it is too much to ask them to join him in taking on the government
yet again.

He said he was also worried about the compensation payments for the other
members of the Birmingham Six being affected if they joined him in court
against the government.

"The establishment hate me and people like me as we proved them wrong," he
said. "They either want to ignore us or hurt us."

O'Brien took the Home Office to court last March and won, but Blunkett
appealed the decision. On Tuesday, the rights and wrongs of the government
policy will be decided at the Royal Courts.

O'Brien said: "Morally, the position of the government is just outrageous. It
shows total contempt for the victims of miscarriages of justice. It makes me
livid.

"I really believe if we win the appeal this week, the government is evil
enough to take me to the House of Lords. They are trying to break us. I really
think this is personal as far as the government is concerned.

"A government really can't get much worse than this. But I am confident that
we will win as the law and morality are on our side."

Vincent Hickey, one of the Bridgewater Four who was wrongly convicted for
killing a paperboy, was charged £60,000 for the 17 years he spent in jail. He
said: "If I had known this I would have stayed on hunger-strike longer, that
way I would have had a smaller bill."

John McManus, of the Scottish Miscarriage of Justice Organisation, said: "This
is reprehensible. How can we call ourselves a democratic, civilised society
when our government is acting like this?

"The government seems intent on punishing innocent people. The state wants to
be paid for making a mistake. It's hard to believe someone actually thought
this policy up. If you tell a child about this they will think it insane.

"Only a sick mind could have invented this policy, yet the government is
fighting to retain the right to act like this. It is cruelty with intent. They
seem to want to punish people for having the audacity to be innocent."

The SNP's shadow justice minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said: "This is outrageous.
It is another assault by Blunkett on the rule of law and on civil liberties.
These people didn't choose to go to prison. They were wrongly convicted, and
to charge them for it beggars belief."

The Home Office said an "independent assessor appointed by the Home Secretary
takes into acccount the range of costs the prisoner might have incurred had
they not been imprisoned". The spokesman said the assessor was "right" to do
this, adding: "Morally, this is reasonable and appropriate."

'I was a hostage, now they are billing me'

Robert Brown was just a 19-year-old from Glasgow when he was jailed for life
for murdering a woman called Annie Walsh in Manchester in 1977. He served 25
years before he was finally freed in 2002, when the courts ruled him innocent
of the crime.

He is now facing a bill of around £80,000 for the living expenses he cost the
state. For Brown, it is the final straw. An interim payment he was given
pending his full compensation offer is exhausted; his mother recently died;
his relationship with his girlfriend has fallen apart and he is facing
eviction from his home following a mix-up over benefits.

"I feel like ending my life," he says. "I've tried to maintain my dignity, but
the state has treated me with nothing but contempt - now they are asking me
for money for my bed and board in jail.

"I never contemplated suicide once while I was in prison, but it's different
on the outside. I have received no counselling or support. Society is treating
me like something you'd wipe off the bottom of your shoes, but I'm an innocent
man and a victim of a terrible injustice.

"It's horrific. I've been out of jail for 14 months and in that time the state
has put me through a war of attrition that it never needed to conduct. I feel
my life is disintegrating around me.

"Making me pay for my bed and board is abhorrent. I was arrested, fitted up
and held hostage for 25 years and now they are going to charge me for being
kept as their prisoner against my will.

"Can you think of a more disgusting way to abuse someone? I really feel that
my heart is truly and finally broken."

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