UN highlights ‘psychological harm’ to UK man jailed since 2012 for phone theft

Indefinite (IPP) sentences were introduced in 2005 to detain serious offenders but were also used against those who had committed low-level crimes. Photograph: wyrdlight/Alamy

A UN torture expert has called the case of a man driven to psychosis after being jailed in the UK for more than a decade for stealing a mobile phone “emblematic of the psychological harm” caused by indeterminate sentences.

Thomas White was handed an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence in 2012 for stealing a mobile phone – four months before such prison terms were abolished. He has been in jail ever since after initially receiving a minimum two-year tariff.