Over Christmas, you probably heard about the ITV drama series “Mr Bates vs The Post Office.” The show depicts the real-life saga of hundreds of postmasters who were wrongly convicted of theft and false accounting, when in fact, a defective computing system was to blame. When shortfalls appeared in postmasters’ accounts, the Post Office accused them of fraud rather than conducting a real investigation.
The human toll of this scandal is impossible to quantify. People lost their livelihoods, homes, life savings, reputations, and in some cases even their freedom after being jailed for crimes they didn’t commit. At least four postmasters committed suicide.
