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“All I was after was the truth,” says Dr Jim Swire.

The retired GP’s 35-year search for answers has seen him board a US-bound flight from Heathrow carrying a replica bomb, hold a secret meeting with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and collapse in shock after a criminal trial at a former military base in the Netherlands.

His 23-year-old daughter was among the 270 people killed in the Lockerbie bombing on 21 December 1988 – the deadliest ever UK terrorist attack.

“I think I know who was responsible for killing her and I think I can prove it,” the old Etonian, now 87, says in a new four-part Sky documentary.

He keeps the evidence he has collected in cardboard folders in a metal filing cabinet in an office in the Cotswolds home he shares with his wife Jane.

‘No one had really heard of Lockerbie’

Flora “was everything a parent could wish for,” says Mrs Swire.

She was about to turn 24 and studying medicine when she set off to the US to meet her boyfriend for Christmas.

“Everything was booked up, except there were plenty of seats available on a certain flight known as Pan Am 103,” says Dr Swire, sitting in a leather armchair in his cottage, overlooking the rugged coastline on the Isle of Skye.

Less than 40 minutes after taking off from Heathrow on the transatlantic leg to New York’s JFK, the Boeing 747 was 31,000ft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie when the aircraft was almost instantly destroyed by a massive blast.

The wrecked nose section of the Pan-Am Boeing 747 lies in a Scottish field at Lockerbie, near Dumfries
Image:
The wrecked nose section of the Pan-Am Boeing 747 lies in a Scottish field at Lockerbie, near Dumfries

Residents remember “a huge explosion” before the sky lit up with “bright red flames” and a “great big mushroom ball of fire”.

“Before 1988, no one had really heard of Lockerbie,” says Colin Dorrance, who was a young 19-year-old recruit just three months into his police career at the time.

“Life here was just undramatic.”

That all changed at 7.03pm that evening. All 259 passengers and crew members on board the plane were killed along with 11 people in the town as windows were blown in and wreckage destroyed their homes.

Locals are still haunted by images of the bodies that fell from the sky, some still strapped in their seats as they landed in gardens and fields.

The smell of aviation fuel hung thick in the air as they surveyed the carnage strewn with luggage and the Christmas presents victims were carrying for loved ones.

270 people died on 21 December 1988
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270 people died on 21 December 1988

Peter Giesecke can’t shake the image of the woman still wearing one high-heeled shoe, while Margaret and Hugh Connell became “attached” to the man they found in a field near their home, watching over him for 24 hours until his body was recovered.

“We developed quite a love for ‘our boy’, not knowing who he was,” says Mr Connell.

As news of the disaster broke, relatives were desperate to know whether their loved ones were on board.

Unable to get through to Heathrow, Dr Swire rang the Pan Am desk in New York and could hear “chaos in the background and women screaming” as families of the victims, many of whom were American, received the terrible news.

Dr Swire, tall and slim with a full head of white hair, is measured as he recalls the kindness of the pathologist who allowed him to see his daughter’s body in the local ice rink, where the postmortems were being carried out.

“She was barely recognisable,” he says, the grief which still bubbles just under the surface after all these years coming to the fore as he tells how he was allowed to take a lock of Flora’s hair.

“Human kindness can be very important when these things happen,” he adds, with tears in his eyes.

Jim and Jane Swire
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Jim and Jane Swire

‘Nothing quite adds up’

It took investigators a week to discover the disaster was caused by a bomb in a terrorist attack against the US – the biggest in the country’s history until 9/11.

“My first reaction was of fury, which led me to want to find the truth,” says Dr Swire. And that did a lot to help with the grief because I was busy doing things. It was rather how, I think, Flora would’ve reacted.”

The prime suspect was Iran, but they have always denied any involvement in the attack.

Iran had vowed to take revenge for the accidental downing of an Iran Air passenger flight by the US Navy in the Gulf in July 1988, which killed 290 people.

But the sprawling international investigation was just beginning.

“Nothing is what it seems in the Lockerbie story, nothing quite adds up,” says local reporter David Johnston, one of the first journalists on the scene.

It soon emerged a call was made to the US embassy in the Finnish capital that a Pan Am plane from Frankfurt to the US would be bombed in what was known as the “Helsinki warning”, with American diplomats in Europe told of a threat.

Passengers and luggage were transferred at Heathrow to Pan Am 103 from a feeder flight originating in Frankfurt and Dr Swire believes the plane was only two-thirds full because people were “warned off”. “We weren’t warned. Nobody told us,” he says.

“I felt I had a right to know the truth about how my daughter had come to be killed and why she wasn’t protected against being killed. And those were the bases on which we very soon found we were being richly and profusely deceived by the authorities.”

Flowers at the commemoration service
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Flowers at the 2018 commemoration service

The ‘biggest crime scene in history’

Wreckage from the plane was spread over 845 square miles in what Richard Marquise, who headed up the FBI Lockerbie taskforce, describes as “the biggest crime scene in history”.

Investigators concluded the bomb was in a cassette player that was wrapped in clothes and put inside a brown hard-sided Samsonite suitcase.

A fragment of Toshiba circuit board pointed to possible links to tape recorder bombs made by Iran-backed PLFP-GC, a Palestinian terror group active in the 1970s and 1980s, who were suspected of carrying out the attack for the Iranians.

Dr Swire took his own replica bomb – the explosive material substituted for marzipan – on a plane from Heathrow to the US to highlight the security flaws.

“It was an obsession,” he admits. “All I was after was the truth of why our beautiful daughter had been murdered and I was bloody determined to find out who did it.”

The kindness of the women in Lockerbie

Meanwhile, in Lockerbie volunteers were cleaning the mud, blood and aviation fuel from the victims’ belongings left scattered amid the wreckage and bodies.

Clothes were washed, pressed and folded, jewellery was polished, and the pages of a tattered bible were individually ironed.

Miami-based Victoria Cummock, whose husband John died on board, was surprised to receive his clean laundry.

“I got back his personal effects due to the kindness of the women in Lockerbie,” she says.

Victoria Cummock
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Victoria Cummock

The Malta connection and the Libyans

Charred clothes which were packed with the bomb were traced to a shop in Malta, and two Libyan suspects came into the FBI’s sights.

Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya had a motive for the attack after an American bombing in capital Tripoli and a tiny fragment of circuit board, called PT35, found embedded in a shirt collar 20 miles from Lockerbie, was traced to Swiss electronics expert Edwin Bollier, who said he sold a batch of timers to the rogue state.

After CIA asset Majid Giaka, a Libyan double agent codenamed “Puzzle Piece”, said he saw the suspects with a brown suitcase at Malta airport the day before the bombing, two men were charged.

But there was little hope of Colonel Gaddafi handing over Abdelbaset al Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, a security official for Libyan Arab Airlines, to face trial.

Telling only his wife for fear he would be intercepted by the security services, Dr Swire travelled to Libya to meet the dictator face to face in an attempt to persuade him.

“I was pretty crazy at that time,” he says. “I was so determined that I wasn’t scared, nervous yes, but not scared.”

Dr Swire says he heard the “click, click, click” of Gaddafi’s female soldiers readying their AK47s as he opened his briefcase to reveal pictures of his daughter, then again at the end of the meeting when he pinned a badge reading “Lockerbie the truth must be known” to the Libyan leader’s lapel.

The meeting had no obvious impact, and it was not until 11 years after the bombing that Gaddafi finally agreed to extradite the suspects in the face of tough economic sanctions imposed in response to the atrocity.

DAMASCUS, SYRIA- MARCH 29: Libya's President Muammar Gaddafi looks on at the opening of the two-day Arab Summit in Damascus, Syria March 29, 2008. The Arab summit will be held in the Syrian capital from March 29-30. (Photo by Salah Malkawi/ Getty Images)
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Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed by rebel forces in 2011

‘The shock was so great I collapsed’

The trial was held at former US Airforce base Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, under Scottish law, and Dr Swire rented an apartment with Rev John Mosey, whose 19-year-old daughter Helga died on board Pan Am 103, to follow the evidence closely over 84 days.

Supergrass Giaka crumbled in the witness box as he was shown to be a liar and a fantasist, while Bollier couldn’t confirm he supplied the bomb timer to Libya.

“I couldn’t continue to believe that there was a cogent body of evidence that justifies the finding of either of those two men guilty,” says Dr Swire.

John Mosey
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John Mosey

The Scottish judges cleared Fhimah but found al Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder for which he was later handed a life sentence.

“The shock of the verdict initially was so great I collapsed,” says Dr Swire.

Families of the American victims were pleased with the guilty verdict and FBI agents felt vindicated by the finding Libya was behind the bombing.

But Dr Swire “couldn’t believe three senior Scottish judges could convict someone on that evidence”, which he believes to be “false” in order to frame Libya to protect the West’s fragile relationship with Iran.

“I wasn’t prepared to have anything associated with Flora’s death as untrue and debasing as the story that was raised by the authorities against those two men,” he says.

“I was very shaken up psychologically by the fact I knew al Megrahi was innocent, and the authorities protected her killers.”

Sky News has contacted the Scottish Crown Prosecution Service for a response.

The cockpit section of the Pan Am Boeing 747 lies on Banks Hill near Lockerbie
Image:
The cockpit section of the Pan Am Boeing 747 lies on Banks Hill near Lockerbie

‘The truth is very simple’

In 2009, al Megrahi was released from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, having spent just nine years behind bars.

But some believe he was freed in exchange for an oil deal with Libya.

He received a hero’s welcome when he landed back home with Scottish flags waved as he got off the plane.

Families of the American victims were disgusted but Dr Swire was happy and even visited him before he died in 2012.

From his Zurich office, Mr Bollier now claims the PT35 fragment is a fake and says he believes police tampered with the evidence.

He also says he was shown a brochure with two briefcases full of cash and offered 4 million US dollars by Mr Marquise, but the ex-FBI agent insists he didn’t offer him “one cent”.

For Dr Swire “the truth is very simple but the consequences of trying to conceal the truth are very complicated”.

“I think she (Flora) was killed by a bomb which was ordained by the Iranian authorities,” he says.

“They had had an Airbus destroyed by an American missile and 290 people killed. Therefore, they were lusting for revenge.”

Jim Swire
Image:
Jim Swire

Former CIA operations officer John Holt, the one-time handler of Giaka, agrees. “I have no doubt it was Iran,” he says, adding that the PLFP-GC carried out the attack on their behalf.

However, most people still believe the official narrative and Libya has officially accepted responsibility, agreeing to a $2.7bn (£1.95bn) compensation deal with the victims’ families, albeit with expectations sanctions would be lifted.

Dr Swire’s search for answers continues as the alleged bombmaker Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir al Marimi is in US custody awaiting trial accused of being the third man involved in the terrorist attack.

Back in Lockerbie, the Connells did find out who their “boy” was – New Yorker Frank Ciulla.

The couple have formed a lasting friendship with his widow Mary Lou Ciulla and daughter Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, who are greeted with warm smiles and hugs as they step into their home from the Scottish drizzle.

“I felt that he was alone somewhere and yet when I came here, he wasn’t alone,” says Mrs Ciulla, her friend Mrs Connell’s arm around her shoulder. “Mine was actually… a nice story.”

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Post Office scandal: Daughter of victim, who was investigated as she fought cancer, calls on Fujitsu for compensation

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Post Office scandal: Daughter of victim, who was investigated as she fought cancer, calls on Fujitsu for compensation

The daughter of a Post Office victim who was investigated while fighting terminal cancer says it’s time Fujitsu “took responsibility” on compensation.

Katie Watson’s mother Fiona passed away in 2004 less than a year after being forced to admit to stealing from her branch.

During the investigation she was diagnosed with lymphoma.

Ms Watson described it as “cold” and “heartless” to carry on with investigating her mother instead of giving her “a chance” to rest.

“Even if it was a case of ‘go through your treatment and we deal with this on the other side’, there was none of that,” she told Sky News.

What is the Post Office scandal?

Ms Watson added: “If she had been able to fight it properly then she may have had a bit longer… she declined really quickly…she just couldn’t do it anymore.”

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Katie Watson's mother died of cancer after being falsely accused of stealing from the post office
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Katie’s mother died of cancer after being falsely accused of stealing from the Post Office

IT company Fujitsu developed the faulty accounting software Horizon – which saw hundreds of sub postmasters wrongfully accused of stealing from their Post Offices between 1999 and 2015.

Ms Watson is part of a campaign group called Lost Chances which was set up after Fujitsu said it was “morally obligated” to help victims and their families in January.

Fiiona Watson ( L) died before her innocence was established. Pic: Family handout
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Fiiona Watson ( L) died before her innocence was established. Pic: Family handout

Paul Patterson, Fujitsu’s European head, spoke at the Post Office inquiry saying he would “engage” in conversation with sub postmasters and relatives.

He also appeared at a select committee in the same month admitting that the company had a “moral obligation” to contribute towards compensation.

Ms Watson said: “It’s time (Fujitsu) took responsibility and meant it…so far as yet there’s been no action behind it – [Paul Patterson] actually needs to do something.”

Mr Patterson met with sub postmasters and the children of Post Office scandal victims in August.

At the time he spoke to Sky News stating that Fujitsu “will contribute to redress” but that the company’s “common position” was “when the inquiry finishes”.

Read more:
Depression, bankruptcy and jail: Why we sued the Post Office
Son’s anger after mum jailed in second Post Office scandal

The last phase of the inquiry is now drawing to a close – with final submissions held in December.

At his last appearance at the inquiry earlier this month Mr Patterson insisted that the company still “want to engage” but he was “still unclear” on how to help relatives of victims “other than sums of money”.

He promised not to “stay silent” and would explore if Fujitsu is able to “engage” with Lost Chances “before the end of the calendar year”.

The campaign group say their aim is not necessarily just about financial redress but also getting support from Fujitsu in other ways such as establishing a “family fund” to help with things like educational grants and counselling.

After the death of her mother Ms Watson said she was forced to get her first job at 14 years old to “help put food on the table” after her family lost everything.

“We ended up in a caravan – but the caravan site you could only be there for nine months of the year so for three months we were homeless,” she continued.

She added: “I didn’t end up going to college. I missed out on those opportunities – to go to school and have all that childhood.”

Ms Watson now works two jobs, seven days a week.

She said she would “never get back what we lost” but just wanted Fujitsu “to take ownership”.

A Post Office spokesperson said: “We apologise unreservedly to victims of the Horizon IT Scandal and their loved ones.

“Post Office today is doing all we can to transform the organisation for the future and support those impacted to find closure, as far as that can ever be possible.”

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Remains exhumed from grave in search for one of the IRA’s ‘disappeared’

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Remains exhumed from grave in search for one of the IRA’s 'disappeared'

Investigators searching for Joe Lynskey, one of the IRA’s so-called disappeared, have exhumed a grave in County Monaghan.

Sky News understands the remains of “more than one person” were removed from the burial site for formal identification.

Mr Lynskey, 40, a former Cistercian monk who later joined the IRA, was abducted and murdered during a bitter internal feud in 1972.

It was 2010 before the IRA admitted he had been “executed and buried”, at which point he was added to the list of “the disappeared”.

The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains confirmed that the exhumation had taken place on Tuesday.

Read more: Investigators search for body of British soldier Robert Nairac

A spokesman said: “The Commission received information concerning suspicious historic activity during the 1970s at a grave in Annyalla Cemetery.

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“Both the time frame and the location coincide with the disappearance of Joe Lynskey in 1972.

“The ICLVR did not become aware that Joe Lynskey was one of the disappeared before 2010.

“Following an exhumation, there will be a formal process to establish the identify of all of the remains found in the grave.”

“This process may take some time,” he added.

File photo dated February 1977 of Grenadier Guards Captain Robert Nairac talking to children in the Ardoyne area of Belfast.
Pic PA
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British Army captain Robert Nairac is one of ‘the disappeared’. Pic: PA

“The disappeared” are people believed to have been abducted, murdered and secretly buried during the Northern Ireland troubles.

In most cases, the victims were abducted in Northern Ireland but murdered and buried across the border in the Republic.

The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains was established by the British and Irish governments in 1999.

Of the 16 people listed as “disappeared”, the remains of 13 have been located and returned to their families for burial.

Joe Lynskey, Seamus McGuire and Captain Robert Nairac, a British Army officer, are the three cases still listed as unresolved.

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What women in prison miss most, the prison schemes helping them rebuild their lives and why fewer may end up going to jail

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What women in prison miss most, the prison schemes helping them rebuild their lives and why fewer may end up going to jail

In a workshop in the far corner of the Styal prison estate, glass, plastic and metal are being smashed to the beat of pumping music.

Women at workstations are dismantling electronics with the energy of gym enthusiasts.

TVs and laptops, discarded at local recycling centres across England, have ended up here, on the edge of Wilmslow, Cheshire.

But amid the whiz of drills, the crunch of screens being separated from their plastic casings and the clatter of electronic boards ripped out and chucked in big bins, something else is being recycled – women’s lives.

“You get a lot of frustration out, because obviously a lot of girls have got a lot of anger, you know,” says Joanne*, who is serving time for drug offences.

She has joined this activity not for the £10 per 70 TVs she breaks apart, but because the programme – called Recycling Lives – could give her the skills and the support to keep her out of jail in the future.

Only 12% of women are employed six months after leaving prison, compared to 25% of men. In the general population employment levels between men and women are 78% to 72%.

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Ex-prisoners with a job are far less likely to re-offend. So, women prisoners are at a disadvantage. Often a man is connected to the crime they committed.

“For 90% of the women in prison, there’s always a male involved in why they’ve committed crime, it is the case with me as well,” says Joanne, who tells me she was pressured into dealing drugs by her partner.

A Recycling Lives workshop in Styal Prison and Young Offender Institution, Wilmslow, Cheshire

Official Ministry of Justice statistics say that at least 60% of women in prison are victims of domestic violence and most will have experienced some form of abuse as a child.

Many, too, are mothers and they feel the guilt of separation every day. Joanne says of her son: “It’s my sister picking him up from school, not me.

“It’s my sister there on Christmas day, not me. Birthdays, all the special occasions. It’s heart-breaking.

“People think prison is easy. You are ripped away from your family and your children. It’s not easy.”

As if in illustration, the glass cracks on an iPad, as she peels it away with her screwdriver.

Official figures say there are around 3,500 women in prison and it is estimated that about half are mothers.

‘I’m trying to give them a future’

The workshop manager Yvonne Grime knows this all too well. A former serial offender herself, she’s the first former inmate at Styal to now hold a set of keys to the prison.

“The biggest thing for me [as a prisoner] was leaving my children,” she says, “and I still carry that guilt round, but I have come through it.”

A Recycling Lives workshop in Styal Prison and Young Offender Institution, Wilmslow, Cheshire

Part of her redemption is to help the women in her workshop. The Recycling Lives programme transformed her life, and she wants to give back.

She says: “I’m trying to give them a future. I’m trying to give you some hope that they can that they can change.

“Get the children back, find a job, find a home. There is light at the end of the tunnel.”

Her work is part manager and part mentor. “When I first started, I thought I’m just going to come in and run this workshop,” she said.

“I didn’t realise I had to be their mum, their dad, their brother, their sister, the doctor, the nurse, the everything that comes with it.

“If I had a salary for every one of those professions, I’d be absolutely minted.”

Read more:
Justice secretary’s ‘ultimate ambition’ to close women’s prisons
Ex-prisoner shares what life’s like in a women’s jail

Recycling Lives workshop manager Yvonne Grime speaks to Jason Farrell
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Yvonne Grime says ‘there is light at the end of the tunnel’ for female prisoners

Styal isn’t what you expect a prison to look like.

Inside the high fences and barbed wire are sixteen austere red-brick Victorian houses.

Once an orphanage, they’re now the prison’s accommodation blocks.

Ted the prison cat, wanders from block to block, and has already served several of his nine lives in the compound.

Ted the cat at Styal Prison and Young Offender Institution

Along with recycling TV sets, women can learn to guide and drive forklift trucks.

They are quick with their tools, spinning through one appliance after another with remarkable and methodical destructive pace.

But the real advantage of the programme is that it continues on the outside. Only 6% of people who go through Recycling Lives go on to commit further crime. The general reoffending rate is 25%.

In a warehouse in Preston, former inmates are involved in recycling food from supermarkets and farms, then sent to foodbanks.

A Recycling Lives depot in Preston

Here we meet Naomi Winter, who – three years since being released from jail – is now a manager at the food distribution depot.

The hardest thing about prison for her too was being separated from a child.

“I was put in prison when my baby is only three months old,” she said.

“So, it was like losing an arm, like losing a piece of my DNA.

“I still woke up for night feeds in the night and stuff like that.”

She says there wasn’t the mental health provision inside of prison to help her deal with post-natal depression, and she spent way too much time alone with her thoughts.

She was in and out of prison for drug offences and violence eight times by the age of 30 and first jailed aged 15, for breaching an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO).

She feels even short prison sentences can ruin lives, and says: “You take women who’s robbed a block of cheese to feed the child.

“They put them in prison for 28 days. They take the home, take the kids, they lose the family, and they get out with nothing. You just create a criminal right there.

“You’ve just created a woman who’s got nothing to lose. You’re also releasing them with a sleeping bag in a tent and telling them to go and sleep in the woods.”

Recycling Lives' Naomi Winter speaks to Jason Farrell
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Naomi Winter feels even short prison sentences can ruin women’s lives

Alternatives to custody

The government recognises that prison isn’t working for many of the women who end up there.

It’s why, with women being mostly non-violent offenders and serving short sentences, the government is setting up a Women’s Justice Board to look at reducing the number who go into prison with alternatives such as community sentences and intervention projects tackling the root causes of re-offending.

The Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told Sky News: “For many women, prison isn’t working. Most women in prisons are victims themselves. Over half are mothers, with a prison sentence separating parent and child.

“That’s why I am establishing a new Women’s Justice Board, tasked with reducing the number of women in prison by exploring alternatives to custody for female offenders.”

Styal Prison and Young Offender Institution, Wilmslow, Cheshire

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Army officer charged over dummy grenade alert
The bizarre story of a fake carer in Hampshire

Chief Executive of Recycling Lives, Alasdair Jackson says: “There are certain things we all need as human beings: One is a place to live, one is a job to be able to pay for that place to live and then a support network.

“But there are a lot more factors that women have to contend with; there’s children, there is maybe domestic abuse, there’s everything that goes on around that, but when you give people a chance, when you give people the skills that they need, it is life-changing.

“And when you change a woman’s life, you are often changing the family’s life and the children’s life.”

Chief Executive of Recycling Lives Alasdair Jackson OBE speaks to Jason Farrell
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Alasdair Jackson says ‘when you change a woman’s life, you are often changing the family’s life’

Prison is supposed to be part punishment, part repair job. But there are limited programmes like Recycling Lives, and for many women entering jail currently, the only recycling is back into criminality.

* names have been changed

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