This episode was originally published on 10 May 2021.
When the Post Office installed a new accounting system called Horizon across its branches in 1999, it hoped to bring a lumbering and much-loved institution into the 21st century. What happened next resulted in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in English legal history.
The system contained bugs and glitches that showed up as wild shortfalls in the takings in Post Office branch tills. Subpostmasters instantly fell under suspicion for theft and false accounting. Over the course of the following decade, scores of Post Office employees were prosecuted with some going to jail, all based on the evidence from the rogue Horizon computer system.
One of those who ended up in prison was Janet Skinner. She tells Anushka Asthana how her dream job as a subpostmaster in Hull turned into a nightmare after she was accused of stealing £59,000 from her employer. Her ordeal had an enormous impact on her livelihood, her family and her health.
The scandal was gradually uncovered by campaigners and investigative journalists, among them Private Eye’s Richard Brooks. He tells Anushka that the story at points defies belief as the Post Office continued bringing prosecutions against their staff long after they knew there were serious problems with the Horizon system.
Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
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