Wintercomfort

Five years ago today, Ruth Wyner and John Brock were released from prison.

They were social workers who ran Wintercomfort, a day centre for homeless people in Cambridge, and they had been sentenced to five years and four years respectively, for "knowingly allowing the distribution of a class A drug".

There wasn't any suggestion that they had been involved in drugs dealing themselves, or even that they had knowingly tolerated it. The centre had anti-drugs policies, but it also had a policy of confidentiality which meant that they could not go as far as the police wanted them to in passing on the names of people they thought were dealing or using drugs. So when two undercover policemen saw people exchanging bags of heroin on the charity's premises, it was the organisers who were prosecuted and jailed.

They were released because the appeal court decided that, although they were guilty as charged, the sentences were too high.

The Guardian's articles about the case.

( Two things about Ruth Wyner )

This is collateral damage in the war on drugs; a war the government is losing (but they're not going to tell us that.)