A man who was wrongly imprisoned for a rape he didn’t commit may now have to pay for his time spent in prison.
Andrew Malkinson, 57, had his conviction quashed on Wednesday, yet he may have to spend more years proving his innocence to qualify for the government’s compensation scheme.
He has now had all his charges against him dropped but is still awaiting a declaration of innocence from the Court of Appeal.
He needs this to claim compensation.
Andrew Malkinson has criticised the current route to financial compensation
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Malkinson was sentenced to seven years in 2003 for the rape of a mother in Greater Manchester.
This was extended by another decade as the man maintained his innocence.
He was released from jail in December 2020, but his name was still kept on the sex offenders register.
Since being released, the 57-year-old has described his current financial hardship where he criticised the current route to compensation.
"I feel very strongly about this. Somehow the prison service has lobbied the government in the early 2000s,” he told the BBC.
“The result is that even if you fight tooth and nail and gain compensation you then have to pay the prison service a large chunk of that for so-called 'board and lodgings', which is so abhorrent to me.
Andrew Malkinson may have to wait "years" before he even sees any money
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"I am sickened by it."
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has said that compensation for miscarriage of justice cases was assessed on a case-by-case basis by a department caseworker.
The amount, if successful, is then determined by an independent assessor.
This assessor may “consider deductions from the total compensation to reflect the particular circumstances of an individual case,” the MoJ said.
For example, this could mean a prisoner may not have to pay rent on outside accommodation.
If Malkinson even receives any money, his lawyer, Emily Bolton, reported to The Guardian that it could be “years” before he says any of it.
Changes to the law in 2014 means that those who have been wrongfully committed must present new evidence to the MoJ to prove their innocence to succeed in compensation.
This has resulted in state pay-outs being significantly reduced.
The law is also being challenged at the European Court of Human Rights by Victor Nealon, who like Malkinson, spent 17 years wrongly imprisoned.
Malkinson was one of Britain’s longest serving victims of a miscarriage of misjustice.
He said that he thought about suicide many times during his imprisonment and feared constantly for his life whilst locked up behind bars.
Once his sentence was squashed, he said: “I didn’t want to display emotion. I long ago learnt techniques not to display emotion because of the necessities of prison existence. It isn’t a life, it’s an existence, an appalling existence.”
He also called for an inquiry against Greater Manchester police, alongside recompense.
