‘I have given them 21 years of my life, now they want my soul’: IPP prisoner jailed for stealing £20 could be deported in days
A father who spent almost 20 years in prison for stealing £20 has pleaded with the government to halt plans to deport him within days for fears he will face homelessness in a country he does not recognize.
Sheldon Coore, 47, has lived in Britain since he was 16 months old when he and his mother joined his Jamaican grandparents, who settled during the Windrush era.
He was given a controversial public protection (IPP) prison sentence in 2005 after headlocking a man and stealing £20 from his pocket, having already racked up a string of previous convictions when he turned to crime to fund his drug addiction.
Although he was initially given a minimum bond of two years and 65 days, Coore remained in prison for two decades on a widely discredited open-ended sentence that has since been revoked.
But instead of releasing her into the community to rebuild her life with her five daughters in Huddersfield, the Home Office decided to deport her to the country of her birth.
he said in january Independent He felt he was being punished “double, triple and even tenfold” for his crimes after he lost his final appeal against his dismissal.
On Friday he was transferred to Brook House immigration removal centre, near Gatwick airport, where he remains in isolation. He described the transfer process as “harsh” after officers dressed in riot-protection gear strapped him into a body belt restraint device for the journey.
He was initially told he would be put on a flight to Jamaica’s capital Kingston on Monday, but his legal team is fighting to stop this and is seeking a judicial review.
Coore has visited the Caribbean country only once in his adult life. If he is deported, he has no idea where he will stay, whether he will have money or a phone to contact his family in England.
Desperate messages from inside HMP Erlestoke, a category C prison in Wiltshire, revealed before he was transferred that he had not been able to eat or sleep since receiving news of his imminent dismissal.
Coore, who said he was recently diagnosed with autism, said, “I am afraid, even terrified.” “I don’t know what my future holds, I don’t know if I’ll make it through the night of deportation.”
He continued: “I haven’t slept or eaten since this news and these thoughts are constantly running through my mind. It’s unbearable.
“If it continues like this, I worry about everything. Where will I sleep, eat, drink? How will I survive with no money and no job? Who will help me as an autistic man?”
After decades in prison, he fears being left destitute in Jamaica with no family to support him.
He pleaded: “I ask the government to stop all this forever and give me some time off.
“I gave them 21 years of my life for this IPP and now they want my soul. What have I done so bad to the British government that they want to take this kind of revenge on me?”
His lawyers are understood to oppose his dismissal. An immigration expert told Independent It is stated that those deported will likely be directed to a homeless shelter when they arrive in Kingston because they do not have friends or family to stay with.
Campaigning group United IPP Reform Group (UNGRIPP), which supported Coore in prison, compared his treatment to today’s punitive transfers.
“By forcibly removing a man who has lived here since infancy, the government is reviving the colonial practice of keeping ‘undesirables’ out of sight and out of mind,” a spokesman added.
“Sheldon is the victim of the IPP penalty – a disreputable, indeterminate penalty that was abolished 14 years ago and left him stuck well beyond his original tariff. Using him as a catalyst to deport him to a country he doesn’t recognize is a cruel double penalty.”
“UNGRIPP has supported Sheldon for years; it is heartbreaking to see the government remove a man it cannot rehabilitate rather than take responsibility for the broken system it has created.”
IPP penalties were abolished in 2012, but not retroactively. Defective punishment has led to thousands of people being imprisoned indefinitely; some were stuck for up to 22 times longer than the original minimum sentence, including some for minor crimes.
In December 2025, almost 2,400 people were still languishing under IPP sentences; Among them were 924 people who were never released. The majority served at least 10 years longer than their initial minimum term.
Coore served 10 years of his IPP sentence before being released in 2015, but was recalled indefinitely after about 18 months over allegations for which he was never charged.
He was also found guilty of affray and sentenced to 15 months in prison after running away with a knife when police came to arrest him, but he insists he only had enough weapons to take his own life. He has been in prison ever since.
Coore, who said he had always considered himself British, had only visited Jamaica once, for a two-week holiday, 26 years ago.
Moving meant leaving behind her five daughters, a nine-year-old, twins aged 10, and two in their twenties. He also has a four-year-old grandson and another grandson on the way.
At an immigration court hearing last August, Coore argued that deporting him would violate his human rights, but the judge concluded that he had failed to achieve “realistic or effective integration” into British society by being imprisoned for so long, despite being in close contact with his family.
A Home Office spokesman said: “This government will not allow foreign criminals and illegal immigrants to abuse our laws, which is why we are reforming human rights laws and changing the broken appeals system, allowing us to increase deportations.
“All Foreign National Offenders sentenced to imprisonment in the UK are referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity.”
