DANNY IS FREE – BUT SAYS THE SYSTEM IS LETTING HIM DOWN ‘Being out is worse than being locked up’
BANGED up behind bars for almost 12 years, ex-con Danny Weatherson is finally on the outside after fighting a long battle for freedom.
Danny was just 18 when a judge recommended he served almost 16 months for two attempted robberies before he could apply for parole – but it took 11 years and nine months for him to be released.
He was caught up in the controversial Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences which came into force for England and Wales in 2005 but was axed in 2012.
And Danny attempted to take his own life as he lost the will to live while held in jail.
Now, he’s back on civvy street and has to spend three months at a rehabilitation hostel in Leeds before he can return home to his family in Newcastle.
But he says he wants to get back on home soil as soon as possible.
“I have wanted to get out of prison for so long but now that I’m out it is worse than being locked up,” said Danny.
“I’m not getting the support I need, I am bipolar and things have changed since I was out last. I feel like handing myself back into prison because I can’t cope out here. I wanted to be back in Newcastle to be with my family.”
Concerned dad Maurice Stevens says now that his son is out, he continues to worry about him because he feels the system is letting him down.
“Danny has had to apply for universal credit but it is going to take six weeks for his money to get through,” said builder Maurice, 45, of Lemington.
“He gets his breakfast and tea in the hostel but where do they think he is going to get the money from if he wants to eat something for his dinner and money in general to live on? I am giving him money to get by but he’s worried and I am worried for him.
“We were over the moon when we were told he was going to be released, we have fought it for so long. But now he is out, this is another set of problems.
“I feel they have set him up to fail. It would have been better for him to have been surrounded by his family where we would could see him every day and give him the support he needs.
“We gave him a touch screen phone and he didn’t know how to use it. Technology has changed so much in the past 12 years.
“He’s got a long way to go now he’s out.”
Last year we told Danny’s plight of how his time inside has been in high security prisons including HMP Northumberland, HMP Moorlands Danny Weatherson in Doncaster, HMP Armley in Leeds, HMP Frankland in Durham and lastly in HMP Hull. He had taken to self-harm to get him through dark days, but Danny’s family revealed in February 2016 the Parole Board said he could be moved to a category D open prison. However, just weeks later, he was told the prison that had been chosen was changed and Danny tried to kill himself as his hopes were shattered. His solicitor, Shirley Noble, said he was being kept inside as he “poses a risk to himself” and uses the self-harming mechanism to release the pain he suffers emotionally. And his frustrated dad used his son’s attempted suicide to highlight the IPP sentences, intended to protect the public against criminals whose crimes were not serious enough to merit a normal life sentence but who were regarded as too dangerous to be released when the term of their original sentence had expired. Danny, of S c o t s w o o d , N e w c a s t l e , who had been