A Bolton man who is on the run after being recalled to prison indefinitely has made a direct plea to the justice secretary to intervene in his case.
Matthew Booth, 33, is wanted by police on recall to prison for a crime he committed when he was 15 and for which he has served a sentence.
He was given an indefinite imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence, meaning he can be recalled without notice for breaches of strict licence conditions.
Booth was originally convicted of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after he was involved in a fight, hitting someone over the head with a brick. In a separate incident, he stamped on someone’s head.
At 16, he was sentenced to serve a minimum of two years and seven months. He was released in 2013. He has since been taken back to prison three times, twice for arrests that led to no charge.
He has pleaded with the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to intervene after being accused of restarting a relationship with his former partner, Abigail Vernon, with whom he has two daughters, aged 10 and seven, without notifying the authorities.
Booth and Vernon both deny this. They say the Parole Board is also under the misconception that Booth has been abusive to Vernon in the past. They say he has not.
Speaking to the Guardian before Christmas, Booth said he was weighing up two choices: spending the festive period living on his own in a forest clearing or going back to prison on an indefinite sentence.
“I’ve not committed any offence since my original index offence. I just think the whole IPP thing is a bit sick,” he said. “If I could go back to a hostel I would give myself up, but I think I will be sent back to prison and it is just going to break me. I don’t know if I can do that.
“For now, I am going to live on my own, send Christmas cards to my children and see how long I can stand the cold. Some days I have got every intention of handing myself in to the police station. But its a hard thing to do. It is traumatising.”
He said of Mahmood: “[She] could make sure I don’t go straight to prison again. If she said that, I would hand myself in straight away.”
IPP sentences under which offenders were handed a minimum jail term but no maximum were dropped over human rights concerns in 2012, seven years after they were introduced by New Labour.
Many IPP prisoners have said they find themselves being recalled to prison for minor alleged breaches of conditions such as missing appointments or missing a curfew.
Booth was released from his original sentence in 2013, which is when he met Vernon. He was convicted of criminal damage in 2018, was sentenced to eight weeks and was immediately returned to prison.
He was recalled another two times over arrests that led to no further action, including once over a complaint by a neighbour that he said was false and malicious. Each time the arrests resulted in him serving more than a year further in custody. He was last released in November 2023 after serving 19 months.
Vernon denied the Parole Board’s claims that Booth had been abusive to her in the past, and she has asked that he is allowed to be managed in the community.
“If he is sent to prison, it will take another year for him to come out. He has not had any contact with our daughters for months. They are really missing him,” she said. “They don’t understand. How am I supposed to explain this to them? They have not had a proper Christmas with him for five years. It just makes no sense.”
Shirley Debono, a co-founder of IPP Committee in Action, who has supported Vernon and Booth, said: “Shabana Mahmood must intervene and stop Matthew from being sent back to prison.”
A spokesperson for HM Prison and Probation Service said: “Offenders released on licence are subject to strict conditions and, as the public would rightly expect, they are recalled to prison if there are concerns for the safety of those in the community.”
