Shameful injustice
She was wrong. Over a ten-month period this woman received more than 100 sickening letters from her attacker, written when he was behind bars.
The failings that allowed this to happen show extraordinary incompetence on the part of the prison authorities. Worse, they show an almost total lack of compassion for the woman's plight. Even though she complained about the letters, the response she received back was little more than a bureaucratic shrug. What can we do, the prison service said in effect, it's out of our hands.
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Hide AdThe principle at the heart of this saga – the right of prisoners to have uninterrupted and unopened correspondence with their lawyers – is an important one. But like all rights and privileges it comes with responsibilities. If, as in this case, the convention of "legal correspondence" was cynically abused to allow a prisoner to continue the campaign of harassment for which he had been put inside, then that right should have been forfeited. The authorities involved should be ashamed, and review their procedures immediately.