Post Office Workers Convicted of Theft Due To Faulty Software Have Names Cleared

Britain's Court of Appeals has cleared a group of 42 sub-postmasters and postmistresses for theft, fraud and false accounting. They were convicted, with some imprisoned, after the Post Office installed faulty software in the branches where these office operators worked. The BBC reports: Following the convictions - including theft, fraud and false accounting -- some former postmasters went to prison, were shunned by their communities and struggled to secure work. Some lost their homes, and even failed to get insurance owing to their convictions. Some have since died. They always said the fault was in the computer system, which had been used to manage post office finances since 1999.

The Horizon system, developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was first rolled out in 1999 to some post offices to be used for a variety of tasks including accounting and stocktaking. But from an early stage it appeared to have significant bugs which could cause the system to misreport, sometimes involving substantial sums of money. Horizon-based evidence was used by the Post Office to successfully prosecute 736 people. But campaigners fought a long and series of legal battles for compensation in the civil courts, which have been followed by referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. A Post Office spokesman said: 'We sincerely apologize to the postmasters affected by our historical failures. Throughout this appeals process we have supported the quashing of the overwhelming majority of these convictions and the judgment will be an important milestone in addressing the past.'

Long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. reacts: As a software geek, the part I find most troubling is that blind faith that those in authority placed in the software without proper accounting. Accounting systems and Software are deterministic, well they should be. IF the system/software worked correctly, this missing money must have shown up somewhere. Software defects are always traceable. It might be expensive and time consuming but persistence will win in the end. Somebody somewhere is responsible for this and defacto framing of these people is criminal in principle, if not in law.

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