Sitting on a video link from the Welsh prison where he had spent most of his adult life, Leighton Williams said what he witnessed in a courtroom 170 miles away “didn’t seem real”.
He was being freed, a judge in London told him, after ruling that the controversial indeterminate sentence he was handed for a drunken fight aged 19 was a mistake.
He should have been given a five-year determinate sentence and would likely have been freed after serving half that time. He would have been out by the time he was 22.
But now aged 36 and having served more than 16 years – mostly in custody – he knows the imprisonment for public protection (IPP) he was wrongly handed has robbed him of some of the best years of his life.
“I have missed out on growing up with my friends,” he told The Independent. “Going out. Getting a trade, being able to work. Just living a normal life.
“I deserved to go to jail – I understand that. There is no doubt about that. But for the length of time – I don’t think you can justify that.”
In his first interview since he was finally freed in May, Mr Williams railed against the injustice of the IPP sentence which he described as “mental torture”.
He revealed his anger at learning of the government’s early release scheme which will see prisoners freed after serving just 40 per cent of their fixed term sentence to ease overcrowding, while almost 3,000 IPP prisoners still languish inside with no release date.
The IPP jail terms – under which offenders were given a minimum tariff 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 terms.
Of 2,796 IPP prisoners currently incarcerated, 708 have served at least 10 years longer than their minimum tariff.
The Independent is campaigning for all IPP prisoners to have their sentences reviewed.
Mr Williams is the first to admit he deserved to go to prison after he and some friends had got into a fight in a park after a day of drinking in his hometown of Caerphilly, Wales, in August 2007. His victim suffered a fractured jaw and cheekbone in the assault.
So when he was handed an IPP sentence with a minimum tariff of 30 months at Cardiff Crown Court the following year, he did not press for an appeal.
“When I went in, I didn’t know what IPP was,” he said. “I didn’t have a clue what it was until like for or five years went past – the realisation kicked in then.”
He eventually learned he was to be kept in prison indefinitely until he could convince a parole board that he did not pose a risk to the wider public.
He described living under sentence as “helpless, hopeless” and “empty” as he was repeatedly knocked back at bi-annual parole board hearings, adding: “It just doesn’t feel like there is a way out.”
He was incarcerated for almost nine years before finally being let out under strict licence conditions.
During four treasured years of freedom, he started a family and his first two children were born. But he was hauled back to prison on recall after his neighbours called the police after overhearing a row in his back garden.
Mr Williams was arrested, but not charged with any crime. Nevertheless, due to the licence conditions he was returned to prison under the same IPP sentence and found himself back at square one – waiting for the parole board to decide to let him go.
