Pauline Campbell, a local prisons campaigner I have dealt with many times, is being prosecuted over her regular protests outside jails where women have died.
Campbell, whose 18-year-old daughter Sarah died while on suicide watch at HMP Styal in Cheshire in 2003, has become one of the fiercest critics of the UK’s treatment of women within the criminal justice system and is not popular with the authorities.
I’ve written at length about the shortcomings of the way Britain deals with female law-breakers here and here, so won’t repeat it again.
To highlight the issue, Campbell – a trustee of the Howard League for Penal Reform – and her small but dedicated band of supporters hold a vigil outside the prison, days after each woman dies in custody. They’ve held 28 since April 2004. A shocking 41 women have died in custody since Sarah Campbell.
On several occasions she has been man-handled by police when trying to block entry to vans carrying prisons to and from prison, and a couple of times has ended up pushed to the ground.
Campbell, a former lecturer, has been arrested 15 times and charged five times so far.
The first three were dropped before trial, and the fourth went to trial in September but Campbell was acquitted. This time the CPS seems determined to make the charges stick.
On February 5, she was arrested while demonstrating outside Styal against the death of the young mother Lisa Marley, who died a week earlier while on suicide watch and on remand at the jail. This week she appeared at Macclesfield magistrates court – unrepresented – to answer the charge that she blocked the highway to a prison van.
She said afterwards: “In an emotional plea to the magistrates, I said ‘I have lost my only child at the hands of the state’. I then asked if the court would consider dropping the case against me, on the grounds that I am a grieving mother, and because the prosecution was a waste of the court’s time, and a scandalous waste of public money.
“The CPS prosecutor told the magistrates that the prosecution was in the public interest, and that the case would continue.
“After telling the magistrates that I regarded the prosecution as vindictive, I ended with my final comment to the court: ‘This case is a disgrace’.”