Thirty Six.

Thirty-six, today I heard about this number, but what did the number mean? Did it mean someone gets paid £36 an hour? Or did it mean, thirty-six people applied for the same job? Maybe it meant someone was married for thirty-six years? No, it was none of the above.

It was on the news that three men had been in jail for murder, for killing a child age just fourteen years old. But today after thirty-six years they were free men, they had all gone to jail for a crime they had not committed.

Say for example one was twenty years old when he went in, he’d be fifty-six today. Or if another of the men was forty when he went in, he’d be seventy-six today, either way your whole life is gone, forever.

How could the real killers sleep at night? Knowing others are paying the price for their crime? The real killers may even be dead, and all those family members, loved ones and friends who have died, knowing they have gone to jail for murder.

Would the police have got rid of all the evidence of the real killers? Is there hope for justice for the child?

What if they are given thirty-six million each, as compensation, would that make up for a whole life lost? Skills, jobs and more importantly their reputation, ruined.

There are people in jails all around the world who are innocent, some live and die in jail, some are attacked for the crimes the other prisoners hear that they are accused of, and the innocent, are again punished, sometimes again and again, over many years.

I would hate for one of these men to have been my brother, dad or grandfather, I would be SO angry! It brings it home to us more if we think of them that way, a family member who is dear to us.

There is lots of things money can’t buy, it can’t give you back the thirty-six years that is lost.

Innocent prisoners in the past have been given the electric chair, thank goodness these three men didn’t have that.

I wish them a long life and good health.