Thousand People Were Convicted of Stealing over Decades It Was a Computer Glitch

Was there not one case where they stepped back and thought maybe this is a totally stand up person and there is something wrong with the software?

A starry cast takes on one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history. They’re the ideal way in to skulduggery so terrifying it could be a Black Mirror episode

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/jan/01/mr-bate...

  LONDON—The U.K. government has taken the rare step of proposing a law to overturn hundreds of convictions of people running post offices across Britain who were found guilty of theft or false accounting, an attempt to rectify a miscarriage of justice that has dragged on for decades. 

  Between 1999 and 2015, some 983 convictions were brought against people managing post office branches across the country, after faulty accounting software mistakenly showed money missing from their business accounts. 

  The convictions devastated the lives of hundreds of postmasters and postmistresses—who were self-employed and operated local post offices like a franchise—many of whom were driven into bankruptcy and some of whom ended up in jail. Four died by suicide. One postmistress was jailed while pregnant. Others spent their savings trying to make up shortfalls in their post-office accounts which the accounting system, called Horizon, erroneously flagged. Some 60 have died before having their convictions quashed.

  Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday that legislation would soon be presented to Parliament to ensure convictions are scrapped and compensation is paid, in an unusual move that would see Parliament overturn decisions made by the courts. “This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history,” he said. 

https://corporate.postoffice.co.uk/en/horizon-scandal-pages/...

  The Horizon system was first introduced from 1999. Prosecutions in which Horizon evidence may have featured took place between 1999 and 2015.


  Is Horizon still being used?

  Yes. There have been several versions of Horizon since its introduction in 1999 and the current version of the system, introduced from 2017, was found in the group litigation to be robust, relative to comparable systems. But we are not complacent about that and are continuing to work, together with our postmasters, to make improvements.

  We will be moving away from Horizon to a new IT cloud-based system that will be more user-friendly and easier to adapt for new products and services. This is currently being developed with the involvement of our Postmasters.

Calls grow for Fujitsu to pay for Post Office injustice

  She is angry the Japanese-owned company, which developed the software at the heart of the affair, is still winning government contracts 20 years after the problems first arose.

  Fujitsu said it was sorry for its role in sub-postmasters' suffering.

  No-one from Fujitsu has been held to account for failures with Horizon, the software it supplied to the Post Office. The firm has not paid any compensation to victims and has continued to win government contracts for its IT services worth billions of pounds.