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Prison rights campaigner will fight on
A PRISON rights campaigner is being hauled before the courts after she was arrested during a protest to highlight the death in custody of a Blackpool mother.
Sixty-year-old Pauline Campbell has been charged with wilful obstruction after she tried to prevent a police van from entering Styal Prison gates in Cheshire where the demonstration was held.
She was protesting outside the women's jail following the death of mum-of-one Lisa Marley.
Ms Campbell was held by police until the early hours of yesterday following her arrest on Tuesday and has been bailed to appear before Macclesfield Magistrates Court on February 27.
But she said her latest arrest, which is the 15th time she has been apprehended by police during one of her demonstrations, would not deter her in her crusade to highlight conditions in women's prisons. Her own daughter Sarah died at Styal in 2003.
She said: "Being held in police custody for more than nine hours and locked in a dirty police cell for most of the time does not deter me. For daring to protest against the death of a young mother, the criminal justice system again seeks to criminalise and punish me. I am not alone in thinking this is vindictive.
"The nurse who examined me was of the opinion that my raised blood pressure was caused by anger and distress.
"Distress not only about Lisa Marley's death, but the knowledge that her child is now motherless. My own mother died when I was aged three years, so I understand the deep sense of loss this innocent child will suffer."
Lisa, 32, of Lostock Gardens, South Shore, was found hanged in her cell on January 23. She had suffered a brain injury and died four days later.
She is the second Fylde woman in a year to die at the prison following the death of Helen Cole, 48, of Belvedere Road, Thornton, in June last year.
Styal governor Steve Hall has defended the prison's record saying some deaths in custody were "inevitable" but that thousands of other lives had been saved by the institutions staff.
- CRIMINAL proceedings against a woman found hanging in her cell at Styal Prison have been formally dropped. The seven assault charges and one offence of racially aggravated threatening behaviour faced by Lisa Marley, 32, of Lostock Gardens, South Shore were officially dismissed by Blackpool magistrates.
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Sunday 27 May 2012
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