A father of five who has lived in Britain since he was a toddler is facing deportation to Jamaica, a country he has only visited once as an adult, after serving almost 20 years in prison for a £20 robbery.
Sheldon Coore, 47, was handed an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence in 2005 after putting a man in a headlock and stealing £20 from his pocket. Despite a minimum tariff of just two years and 65 days, Coore has languished in prison for two decades due to the open-ended nature of the IPP sentence, which has been widely criticised as unjust.
Coore, who has always considered himself British, says he is being “punished twice and thrice and even tenfold” despite the IPP sentence being acknowledged as a mistake. The open-ended sentences were scrapped in 2012, but not retrospectively, leaving almost 2,500 people trapped without a release date.
Now, the Home Office has successfully applied to deport Coore to Jamaica, a country he has only visited once in his adult life. Coore’s family, including his five daughters and granddaughter, fear he will not cope without their support system, and his mother, Dorrett Miller-Douglas, 62, says the government has her child’s “life in their hands”.
Campaigners have described Coore’s case as an illustration of the “greatest stain on the UK’s justice system”, with the United Group for Reform of IPP (UNGRIPP) stating that “to serve 20 years for a £20 theft is not justice; it is a life destroyed by a sentence that was abolished over a decade ago precisely because it was found to be unlawful and inhumane.”
The government has defended its actions, stating that it will not allow “foreign criminals and illegal immigrants to exploit our laws”, but critics argue that the human cost of the IPP legacy cannot be ignored. They are calling for an urgent review of all IPP cases to ensure that proportionality, the foundation of the legal system, is finally restored.
