I was wrongly imprisoned for 17 years. Then the state released me into a legal maze | Andrew Malkinson

Uwhen I appeared blinking in the sunlight before the Court of Appeal last July as a ‘free man’, I too was impoverished. I was living on universal credit, homeless and in urgent need of mental health support from clinicians who would finally understand what I had been through for the last 20 years.

In the days after my vindication, the news was followed by comments from the public suggesting that I should be owed a large payout from the state. Millions, they reckon. Enough to make sure I can own a home, make up for lost time, and provide the support I need for my mental health. This week I found myself in line at the local food bank. I am so grateful to the people who so generously stocked my kitchen for the week, but given what the state owes me, I shouldn’t be in this position.

There is a statutory scheme to compensate victims of wrongdoing in the UK. In fact, the UK has had some sort of compensation scheme for decades. But nine months after a court overturned my 2004 stranger-rape conviction, I’m still living on £363.74 a month in Universal Credit. I have weekly consultations from a charity because the NHS said I would have to wait five months to get help – and because I accepted the offer from the charity I was taken off the NHS waiting list. I’m no longer homeless, but that’s because I was finally offered housing by the local council, paid for by housing benefit – not because the court system recognized any duty to support me in the months after my release.

at the moment I am payout the state £5 a month, for what I thought was an overpayment of universal credit, when I left the country for more than 28 days to fulfill my long-held dream of travel. Of what the Guardian pays me for this article, the government will get back 55p in the pound. I have to attend fortnightly ‘job training’ sessions for a job I can’t do because of my mental illness – but if I could manage a job I’d lose the legal aid funding I need to bring a civil claim against responsible for this happened to me.

Don’t get me wrong the council flat made a huge difference. Single place in an over 55 block. There is a bell I can pull if has hypoglycemia (I have type 1 diabetes) and they let Basil, my lawyer’s ridiculously needy cocker spaniel, stay with me while I get settled. And I get to know my neighbors. Last week I was asked to help an elderly lady with her shopping. You can imagine how it feels, given the lens through which I’ve been viewed for the past two decades.

What led to my being wrongfully convicted is properly addressed – including public inquiry. But attention must also be paid to what anyone who has been wrongfully convicted faces after their release. And this is a “compensation” regime created by people who simply cannot believe that our justice system can convict the completely innocent. (I use scare quotes because I can’t be “compensated” – how much would you have to be paid to spend 17 1/2 years in prison for a wrongly convicted sex crime?)

I admit I can be paranoid. If you’ve been sent to prison for a crime you didn’t commit, every time you encounter a barrier to what you’re looking for, it feels personal. What I am looking for is an understanding of who is responsible for my belief and perpetuating it for almost 20 years. I am also looking for funds to support me in living out the rest of my life as a person who is simultaneously very angry and very vulnerable – and ignorant of the modern world after 17 and a half years in a box.

Right now I’m encountering nothing but barriers. That’s because lawmakers who overhauled the “compensation” system in 2014 did so as if they were laboring under the delusion that the state had somehow been consistently ripped off by inmates whose convictions were overturned.

So they put up barriers that I was determined to challenge before applying. These hurdles include deductions from any awards to cover your board and prison accommodation (this has it has now been canceled thanks to public outcry when it turned out that I would have to pay my captors after I was released); and a choice between making an interim payment now or getting legal aid to sue the police later (which the government says it will repeal it later this year after picking it up last year). I have asked the Ministry of Justice to raise the £1m cap on compensation, which has not increased with inflation since it was first introduced in December 2008, but has so far refused. I must hope that he will reconsider this decision when my application is ready.

But worst of all, to get any payment under the scheme, it is not enough to have your conviction overturned; you must prove your innocence. Again. This is a violation of the presumption of innocence. Over the past eight years, less than 7% victims of miscarriages of justice who have applied for the statutory compensation scheme since this requirement was introduced have been successful. In other words, more than 93% were denied compensation.

I feel like the legislators who work here are more paranoid than I am. The Court of Appeal can set aside a conviction only when it finds that it is unsafe. My experience is that this is a very high standard. If the Prosecutor’s Office believes that a person is guilty after winning an appeal, it can request a retrial. Lawmakers’ fears of the odd undeserving case slipping away mean the rest of us are left empty-handed.

So, after 20 years trapped in the criminal justice system’s fantasy that I was guilty, I am now trapped in parliamentarians’ paranoia that a large proportion of people whose convictions are overturned might be guilty. As I stood on the steps of the Court of Appeal in July last year, I thought I was finally out of the legal maze. It turned out that I was just standing at the entrance of the neighbor.