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Comment by physicsguy | Hacker News Reader

It's not quite that, anybody in the UK can bring a private prosecution in the UK if the want, so the Post Office was not a special case here. It's really uncommon today, due to the cost, etc. and what often happens is that the "Crown Prosecution Service' which is the government organisation repsonsible for prosecuting crimes normally can 'take on' a prosecution and then choose discontinue it, which effectively stops it. Note that this is only the case in England/Wales, in Scotland the system is quite different. With that said, there are several organisations that do it still - the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) still regularly brings private prosectuions.

Historically, all prosecutions were private, and later, the police who investigated them carried them out.

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    Between 1999 and 2015, an estimated 3500 staff employed
    by the state-owned Post Office service were accused of
    fraud, theft or malicious accounting.

    Almost 700 of them were convicted in courts and some 230
    were jailed.

    Most were legally compelled to repay the amounts they
    were accused of fleecing, resulting in bankruptcies,
    marriage failures, substance abuse and even suicides.

    There was just one not-so-little problem – virtually all
    of those people were innocent

Thats a lot of accusations and prosecutions don't you think, for it to go unnoticed or uninvestigated for such a long duration, dont you think?

Doesnt the UK have independent non-political bodies that watch the watchers? What about protections for whistleblowers who call these things out?

Frankly that sounds Banana-Republic-ish and not something you would find in a first-rate advanced economy.

[1] Inside the incredible and devastating postal service scandal that could bring down the UK government

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/inside-the-incr...

It's been called out for a long time. I remember reading about this scandal at least 5 years ago, and it was old news then. It's only blown up now because of a TV show based on it, and the government finally getting off their ass to have a public inquiry about it. That's what's so frustrating about it: it should have been bloody obvious way sooner that there was an issue, it should have stopped when someone actually voiced the issue, and then it should have been put right as soon as it was obvious it was false. Instead it has taken years and years and years of fighting before anything resembling putting it right has occured.

There has already been a public inquiry, note. It started in 2020. It was set up by Boris Johnson. Yes, I know.

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