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Manchester ARTICLES

Manchester Prison Campaigner Found Dead

16th May 2008

The pressure group Inquest has announced that prison campaigner Pauline Campbell has been found dead. It is believed that Mrs Campbell was found dead close to her daughter's grave in Cheshire.

A spokeswoman for Cheshire Police confirmed that a body was found at the cemetery, she said: “At 6.15 this morning a member of the public alerted police to a body which was found at the gates of Oakhills cemetery in Malpas. We are investigating the circumstances.” However, the spokeswoman said that the police were not yet in a position to identify the body.

Ms Campbell became a member of Inquest after the death of her 18-year-old daughter, Sarah, at Styal prison in January 2003. Sarah was the third of six women to die at the prison in just six months. She had a history of drug abuse, self-harm and mental problems, and was serving three-year jail term for manslaughter.

Although Sarah was in the segregation unit of the women’s prison, she was still somehow able to smuggle drugs into the prison, which led to her overdose. An inquest into her death discovered that the prison had a lack of suitable facilities for vulnerable prisoners, as well as a lack of training for staff.

Following her daughter’s death, Ms Campbell became a prison campaigner and started to protest outside the jails where women had died. Ms Campbell had been arrested 15 times for her protests, although she was never convicted.
Her most recent arrest was for obstructing the highway at a Styal prison protest rally following the death of 32-year-old Lisa Marley, a young mother from Blackpool, who hanged herself in her cell.

After these charges were dropped, Ms Campbell told reporters that the case was a waste of time and money. She said: “From start to finish, this senseless prosecution was a waste of the court's time, a scandalous waste of public money and an enormous drain on my emotional health…this prosecution has felt like an attack on my reputation… I refuse to bow to pressure and will stick to my resolve to hold prison death demonstrations outside jails in England when women kill themselves in the so-called care of the state.”

Source:

Manchester Evening News