General Meeting: May 2026

Due to our speaker cancelling at short notice Janet managed to find a replacement, Martin Rowley who gives a number of talks on various topics and ours was the Criminal Justice System.

Martin’s delivery was fast and punchy and accompanied by a plethora of information and statistics on a rapidly moving screen.

The main thrust of the talk was to increase our awareness of the inbuilt unfairness, corruption and criminality at every level of the system, including the Police, the Prison system, governments, corporate businesses, the Probation service, MPs and titled individuals and more.

We were reminded about 2 famous cases viz The Post Office scandal when 238 sub post masters were imprisoned and even now hundreds of post masters are still awaiting compensation. The Horizon IT company involved was developed by Fujitsu and recommended to the Blair government by Peter Mandelson ! A TV programme revealed the truth and prompted an investigation.

Andrew Malkinson was wrongly accused of rape and served 17 years in prison before he was released. He is still fighting to clear his name and fighting huge legal costs.

Amongst all this disturbing and depressing talk there were a few bright spots. East Midlands is a low crime area, and our present Home Secretary has made some good progress on out of court punishments, safer streets, freeing up prison spaces for the most dangerous criminals and more. Also our system is not as bad as most of the rest of the world! Marianne White