The Journal. - The Computer Glitch That Caused Nearly 1,000 Convictions

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Between 1999 and 2015, some 983 people were convicted for stealing from post offices in the U.K. Some people ended up in jail. At least four died by suicide. Turns out, it was a computer glitch. WSJ��s Max Colchester explains how one TV series helped bring their stories to light— and to justice. Further Reading: - Nearly a Thousand People Were Convicted of Stealing Over Decades. It Was a Computer Glitch.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the past few weeks, a TV show has taken the UK by storm. It's not a period drama like Downton Abbey or a reality dating show like Love Island. Instead, it's a TV series about the post office. Joe, how did the post office money get lost? What is it you've been doing wrong? I don't know either. I have no idea. Oh, I don't want to cry.

Mr. Bates versus the post office tells the story of a real-life injustice that ruined thousands of lives across the UK. It is the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history. That's our colleague, Max Colchester. Over the space of a decade and a half, people who managed these small post offices were accused of various crimes, including theft. And over 200 of them went to jail.

And it turns out that the reason they were found guilty was because of a faulty computer system. And so their accounts showed a deficit when they shouldn't, and they were accused essentially of stealing that money. when they shouldn't, and they were accused essentially of stealing that money. Many of the postmasters who were affected were driven into bankruptcy. At least four people took their own lives. Now, thanks to the TV show, their stories are resonating with millions of people for the first time,

and it's forced a reckoning on one of the country's biggest public institutions. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, January 23rd. Coming up on the show, the TV drama putting a spotlight on a UK scandal. you spot something different. The Bold Seagram 13, a 13% cosmopolitan cocktail. You grab a can and take a sip. Suddenly you're on a fresh adventure, becoming the hero of your own night. Unapologetically full-flavored cocktails with a 13% punch.

Seagram 13, dare to make your own luck. Must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Available at the LCBO. In episode one of Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, we meet Jo Hamilton, who ran a post office in a village in the English countryside. Morning, Jo.

Morning, Jo. All right, Trevor, Nadia. Hi, Mary. Morning. With you tonight? to speak with the real Jo. It's a little funny because I was just watching the show. And so to sort of have the real you in front of me is kind of jarring in a good way. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a story, isn't it?

Yeah. And how would you describe your post office? Kind of jarring in a good way. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a story, isn't it? Yeah. And how would you describe your post office? Especially to us here in the States, it's very different. It's a very quaint. It's like a little English tea room. We turned it into a deli where we sold a lovely range of cold meats and cheeses from all over the world. And it was a proper little shop. Right, so it was a post office,

but it also sounds like it was much more than just post. Yeah, it really was the heart of the community. In the UK, the post office is owned by the state, and people like Jo run local branches in cities, towns, and villages across the country. It's kind of like a franchise that provides government and financial services to the public. The story of the post office scandal begins in the 1990s when a Japanese company called Fujitsu won a contract to bring the post office into the computer age.

The deal was worth more than $1.5 billion and was one of the biggest outsourced contracts in UK history. In 1999, the post office rolled out a computer system run by Fujitsu called Horizon. Which would allow the postmasters to log their sales. It's like a till, basically. It would process the transactions and basically spit out whether they were in the, you know, what their sales were. And it was a way of cutting costs for the post office. And it was seen as a cutting edge piece of technology that would help these people manage their small businesses better. The Horizon software was installed in Joe

Hamilton's post office branch in October of 2003. And at the end of each week, Jo would use it to calculate her profits. But within months, problems began to crop up. And calling Fujitsu technical support didn't help. My first discrepancy happened in December 2003, where I had a £2,000 shortfall. And so I rang the help desk and I said, you know, I'm £2,000 down. And she said, oh, well, you know, do this and this and this. And I literally pressed the button. It doubled it literally right in front of my eyes. Jo says that suddenly she was down £4,000. And the problem escalated. Every week, the Horizon system showed that she had a deficit,

no matter what she did to set the book straight. Joe says when she called the helpline, she was told she was the only person experiencing these problems. And the post office said she was responsible for any missing money. So Joe borrowed money from her parents and from friends. Eventually, she had to remortgage her house. One night, a friend found her sitting on the floor of her post office. She literally saw the light on and came in and she said, whatever's going on? And I said, oh, I'm really in big trouble, you know? And I said, I can't explain it, but there's money missing. And I just presumed, because the number was on the screen, that I've obviously done something wrong and it shouldn't be there, but I didn't have any more money.

And I ran out and she said, well, you've got to stop it. And right now you've got to get help. Jo didn't know it at the time, but others were experiencing the same problem. The Horizon system was showing unexplained shortfalls at post office branches across the country. What did higher-ups at the post office decide to do about these supposed shortfalls? Well, it appears they didn't do very much initially. Well, it appears they didn't do very much initially. And then they decided to clamp down on what they said they thought was fraud within their own company, as it were.

And so they started prosecuting these postmasters, accusing them of stealing this money. If it was a computer glitch, though, like, why were these post office workers being prosecuted? Well, one of the weird things of English law, actually, strangely, in 1999, the year that this horizon system was rolled out, English law changed and said that from now on, evidence presented from a computer will be presumed accurate. It'll be up to the defendant to prove that the computer is wrong, as opposed to the post office to prove that their computer system is working correctly. And it was done, you know, with good intention. The idea being that if you were caught, I don't know, speeding, that the camera that logged your speed was accurate. But then in the computer age, it's just not really fit for purpose.

And so the postmasters were caught in this dystopian nightmare. Right, and presumably a lot of these folks who were in post offices weren't able to figure out, you know, okay, this is the bug in the system here. Exactly, and to make matters worse, and this is the next leg of this scandal, there was a systematic cover-up of the problems with the computer system. And the post office didn't provide the postmaster with the evidence that would show that there were others who were struggling with similar problems.

Worst of all, they even got experts at Fujitsu, who made the computer system, to come and give statements saying that the computer system was working fine and was completely robust. Hundreds of postmasters suddenly found themselves facing prison time for theft. Some were told that if they pleaded to a lesser crime, they could avoid time behind bars. That's exactly what happened to Jo. In 2006, she was fired by the post office and charged with theft. She pleaded down to false accounting, essentially fixing the books. I must admit, the night before I went to court, I just, well, I never slept. Because I just imagined myself waking up in a prison cell the next night, you know.

Jo avoided prison, but she was ordered to pay the post office more than £36,000. That was about $72,000 at the time. Jo didn't have that kind of cash, so her community rallied around her and helped raise the money. I could only get £30,000 on the house. And then someone said, well, why doesn't Jo have an early Christmas present? And I'm not kidding. They all popped money through the solicitor's door. Oh my gosh. It's like it's a wonderful life.

Yeah. Isn't it lovely? The support Jo got from her community made national news. I nearly died when I heard I was in the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. I was like, oh my God, right, I'm in the national papers now. Now everyone knows I'm a fraudster. Nearly died of embarrassment. No, embarrassment. It was national news that Jo Hamilton had been spared from prison by her village. They called me the fallen sub-postmistress. and had been spared from prison by her village.

They called me the fallen sub-postmistress. Oh, my goodness. And then people rang the shop and said, I know someone else this happened to. And then Alan phoned, and it was like, wow. Alan was Alan Bates. The TV show Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office is named after him. He had also lost his post office, but wasn't convicted.

Alan Bates knew that the Horizon system was at fault, and he wanted to prove it. He and Joe joined forces, and soon, they realized that there were hundreds of others like them. Their struggle to get justice? That's next.

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Collect more moments with more ways to earn. Air Mile. In 2009, Alan Bates gathered a group of former postmasters in a sleepy English village. Jo was one of them. We sat around in a circle and we all told our names and what we'd been done for. And every single one of us had been told we were the only ones. And honestly, when I realised that I'd been taken for a fool all that time, it kind of turned a switch in me and I turned into, I went from being a tiny scared person to a monster because I just thought, right, they're not going to get away with

this. It's like, how dare they? And in the beginning, there was just, I think, about 20, 30 people in the hall. And then it's like, then it grew and grew. And then we got 150. Jo met former postmasters who had lost their homes. Others had spent time behind bars. One woman was pregnant when she was imprisoned. I've spent many a night on the phone trying to keep people together to keep going because, you know, when you lose everything, it's just, it's, I mean, it's so hard. And when you can't, when you're in debt up to your ears, it's really hard not to drown in it if you're not careful. Many of the workers who were prosecuted were from minority groups. Here's Max again.

Many of the workers who were prosecuted were from minority groups. Here's Max again. There is definitely an insidious racial tone under this whole thing, which, again, adds another layer of awfulness to the situation. And there was even, I mean, there was even this incredible document that was unearthed in the post office where they grouped those they were prosecuting by their racial features. The documents, which were later made public, showed that post office fraud investigators used group names like

Chinese-slash-Japanese types, dark-skinned European types, and Negroid types. The post office has since apologized for racist language it called, quote, unacceptable. As Joe and the other postmasters kept talking, their sense of injustice grew. it called, quote, unacceptable. As Joe and the other postmasters kept talking, their sense of injustice grew. They began working to try to prove their innocence through the courts. The process of rectifying that injustice is glacial. And that's what really is actually shocking,

is that people have for years known that the Horizon system didn't work and that these people probably didn't commit any crimes. But getting them compensation and clearing their name has taken many, many years. And it was also hard for the Postmasters to get their story out there. News outlets did cover the scandal, but the story didn't build much did cover the scandal, but the story didn't build much momentum with the wider public in the UK. Meanwhile, the post office continued

to prosecute workers until 2015. And it took until 2019 for a court to rule that there were bugs and defects with the Horizon software. And another two years after that, before Joe was able to clear her name. In 2021, she and 38 others were able to get their convictions overturned. They had gone into court this morning as convicted criminals. They emerged as innocent. Relief, joy, anger. they emerged as innocent relief joy anger there's a lot mixed in with these tears but 736 people

have convictions in total many of them still waiting for their day in court hoping they too can finally prove their innocence. So in 2021, when this happened, when your conviction was quashed, was any of that big news at the time? Yeah, we did have a big splash that day and may have been a day after, but it still kind of fizzled out of the news. Hundreds of postmasters still hadn't cleared their names or received compensation. But their story caught the eye of a group of TV producers. They believed it was a tale worth telling.

Did you immediately think, like, wow, this would make a great TV show? Yeah, I did. It was pretty obvious it was a good story. Patrick Spence is an executive producer of Mr. Bates versus the post office. And what felt so compelling to us was that we didn't know the story. Right. Somehow, even though it was in the news, people weren't really as familiar with,

not just like the details of it, but how it truly affected everyday humans. And remember that what they were reading was a computer said they were guilty. Right. And that's quite hard to disbelieve. They were also hearing that many of the sub-postmasters had pleaded guilty to false accounting. So you think, well, they were guilty of something. And then when you see the facts and you see how the post office behaved and what they did and how they bullied them based on no evidence into accepting a lesser plea so that they felt and

sounded like criminals. And so as soon as those facts were laid out in front of us and we started to realize the horror, it became very obvious that this was a story that needed to be told. On January 1st, Mr. Bates versus the post office aired on the British network ITV. And at what point did you realize that it was having an impact, that people were watching it? The next morning. Millions tuned in and the public outcry was immediate and intense. Almost overnight, former postmasters found themselves at the center of a media storm. Here's Jo. I don't think I've ever seen so many cameras or done so many interviews. And you know, we've been banging away for all these years. And, you know, it took the

drama to lift it off the page and make it real for the nation, you know? When did you realize that the show and these stories, your stories, were resonating with people in the UK? Well, if I tell you I went to London yesterday, I had nine people come and give me a massive hug out of nowhere. And my God. And I had four of those wanted selfies with me because they said, you are our hero. And the outcry went all the way to the top. In an unprecedented move, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans for a new law

that would exonerate hundreds of postmasters. This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's history. People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed for absolutely no fault of their own. A public inquiry into what happened is ongoing. In a statement, the post office said that they're aware of the human cost of the scandal and are, quote, doing all we can to right the wrongs of the past as far as that is possible.

The Fujitsu group, which owns the Horizon system, says it's taking the matter seriously, working with the UK government, and hoping for a just outcome for the victims. How long do we think this process of exoneration will take? That's a very good question. And you've seen quite a lot of the postmasters have come out actually of late and say, how is this going to work? And when are we actually going to get money for this? Because it could still be years. Not all is solved by any means. Could there be more consequences for the post office? Yes, I mean, there could be financial consequences

for the post office. But ultimately, this is a state-owned company, and there is a sort of presumption that the taxpayer will step in to ensure this thing doesn't go bust. But I mean, it's gonna have a big, big mountain to climb in rebuilding its reputation here and its trust with people. The post office still uses Horizon Systems.

Jo, what do you want people to learn from what happened to you? It would be nice to think that people might see us as an example of grouping together and fighting back and not taking corporate nonsense. You know, if something's wrong, it's wrong and stand up for it, you know, but you need to be resilient and be in it for the long haul because it's not going to be easy. That's all for today, Tuesday, January 23rd. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Joanna Sugden. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.