Andy Malkinson is relying on Universal Credit and food banks as he rebuilds his life after his exoneration for a crime he didn’t commit.

Writing in the Guardian, Malkinson has lambasted the state of the compensation procedures for those who are wrongly imprisoned, saying he has been released into a ‘legal maze’.

Unable to work because of mental ill-health, Andy Malkinson said nine months after being released from prison he has still not received any compensation because of a regime ‘that was designed by people who simply could not believe our justice system could convict the completely innocent.’

He said the current compensation system also works under the ‘delusion’ that the state is ‘being consistently ripped off by prisoners whose convictions had been quashed’. In reality only a miniscule number of people who have suffered miscarriages of justice receive any compensation for their ordeal.

Although he is unable to work, is he took a job he would then lose access to the legal aid that is helping him fight a civil claim against those who convicted him, despite his innocence.

Malkinson used the article to call on people to pay attention to what happens to the wrongfully convicted once they are released, and the absurd struggle to be compensated by a regime that cannot admit its own faults.

He said after 20 years trapped in the criminal justice system’s ‘fantasy’ that he had committed a grave sexual offence, he is now ‘trapped in parliamentarians’ paranoia that swathes of the people whose convictions are quashed might be guilty.’

Andy Malkinson’s fight for justice is explored in the latest edition of PROOF Magazine. Support the Justice Gap, buy Proof .