Shameful injustice

FOR any victim of sustained harassment, violence and intimidation, the day the perpetrator is finally brought to justice and sent to jail for their crimes should be a moment of relief. No matter what has gone before, and what worries there might be in the future, for now, at least, the victim is safe and can no longer be touched by their tormentor. Or so a Scottish woman thought when a man who had terrorised her for more than 20 years was finally put behind bars.

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.

The 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.