by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (March 25th 2011)
Inadequate
Miscarriage of justice victim Yusef Abdullahi was shamefully denied the after-care that he was entitled to. Despite years to research the issue, the Home Office failed to ensure that the needs of miscarriage of justice victims were considered when devising a service for them. The Home Office Working Group charged to establish the service and the consultant they used failed to talk to those who would need the service.
Instead they decided what was needed and got it wrong – hopelessly wrong. They also allowed an outrageous mistake to be made that excluded the vast majority of miscarriage of justice victims from receiving even the limited assistance that the scheme provided. Nevertheless, this did not stop the government from making claims about the service that simply was not true.
Erroneous Response
Ministry of Justice Minister Baron (Tom) McNally, responded to a written question about after-care from Baron (John) Laird. As follows: “The Ministry of Justice funds the Miscarriage of Justice Support Service (MJSS) to help those who have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal. The MJSS provides help with issues such as healthcare, accommodation, finance and relationships. The MJSSʼ funding has recently been extended for a further year to March 2012 and the Ministry of Justice is working with it to improve the support they provide”.
Unfortunately, this is not true. At best it provides those services to a very small minority of those whose convictions have been quashed. It does not provide those services to all victims of miscarriages of justice as McNally later acknowledged. Eight years after that error deprived Abdullahi and others of that help nothing has changed. That was shameful.
Now the MSJJ has been taken over by the CAB (citizens advice). MOJ victims have to go to their local CAB office to ask for help (can you imagine it?), I have not looked into this service yet to find out how it will work. Carla, who trained so hard and did such Trojan work for her clients, was made redundant.
Hello Michelle, unfortunately the Miscarriages o Justice Project as it was before it became the MJSS sold out Yusef Abdullahi and many other victims. They had the opportunity to fight for victims and extend their remit to what it was supposed to be. It would have been sorted out immediately if they had integrity at the top and demanded the powers they would have had if the Consultant had observed his terms of reference. The then Director was more concerned with their funding than helping those in need. This was a cynical betrayal of justice.