Not long ago, Lucy Connolly found herself being manhandled by up to six prison officers on the wing of HMP Peterborough that has been her home in recent months.
Roughly handcuffed, she was bundled to another wing housing violent inmates and treated so forcefully that she was left in agony. Several days later, her wrists were still bruised.
Lucy's 'crime'? On this occasion it was to object to being moved to a new cell in an area of the prison known as 'The Bronx', so called because it houses the most troublesome inmates – the violent, aggressive and difficult ones.
Lucy Connolly, a childminder, had been none of these things during her months behind bars. Or indeed in civilian life.
But then as we now know, this was not the first time that vastly disproportionate measures were alleged to have been taken against the 42-year-old wife and mother, who found herself placed at His Majesty's Pleasure last October.
