A Picture of Auriol Grey

In the UK, a prison sentence is supposed to fulfil three purposes: 
• Protection of the public from dangerous individuals,
• Punishment, and a deterrent against reoffending,
• Rehabilitation back into society as reformed characters.

So if someone is jailed when:
• They pose no risk to the public,
• Punishment and deterrent concepts are 'lost' because of mental and emotional issues,
• The rehabilitation objective will be counterproductive …

… then why?

Take the recent sentencing of Auriol Grey, who was found guilty of manslaughter after acting 'aggressively' towards and causing the death of a cyclist coming towards her on the pavement. The cyclist veered into the road to avoid Auriol and was killed by a car. Auriol was sentenced to a three-year prison term and has been denied bail pending an appeal.

I gleaned the following from reports in several newspapers and the police website, because I couldn’t find any sort of a court transcript. (That's my get-out-of-jail-free card.)

Auriol went for her regular morning walk along the pavement next to a busy road. She saw the cyclist coming towards her, swore at her and waved her hand to tell her to get out of the way. The cyclist fell off the kerb into the road and was killed by a passing car. CCTV footage shows the lead-up to the incident but stops just as the cyclist goes onto the road. The police commented that the CCTV in its entirety was “horrific and not appropriate for wider release to the public, but, if it were, then I think a lot of the arguments in relation to appropriate responses would be null and void.” There are no reports that Auriol made any contact with the cyclist.

According to the judge, the pavement was 2.4 metres wide “at the relevant point” and was a shared path. However, the police said it wasn’t clear whether it was or wasn’t a shared path. If the police can't be definitive, what chance of any pedestrian or cyclist making the correct call? I’m also not sure about this 2.4 metres’ business. It doesn’t look to me as if the judge took into account the lamp post or road sign “at the relevant point” that would have reduced the usable space for the ladies for several metres either side of it. The CCTV clearly shows Auriol walking in a straight line with enough space for the cyclist to avoid her, except for that lamp post / road sign.

I'm not condoning Auriol’s behaviour, just wondering whether the consequences would have been less tragic had the pavement signage been clearer and the pavement itself wider to accommodate things like street lamps. Is Auriol a scapegoat for local authority fallibility?

Why did Auriol behave so 'aggressively' towards the cyclist? Well, having suffered a brain injury at birth, she’s partially blind, has cerebral palsy, a cleft foot, cognitive and mobility issues and, according to her barrister, "She has nobody to support her apart from a friend and no family support at all [being estranged from them]. She has no financial support at all other than state benefits … If she goes to prison today she would lose her home [an adaptive home with some care] and has no one to store her possessions. She doesn't know what would happen to them."

A probation officer’s report underlined Auriol’s vulnerability and stressed that she had trouble expressing her emotions because of her mental state. She was described as "childlike", and that she does not pose an ongoing risk to the community. While she was unable to articulate emotions, she was able to write them down. Her barrister added, “That is her way of communicating the distress, remorse and empathy she feels for all the people involved and she showed these notes to the officer. She does not express emotions as you or I might.”

Auriol's one and only friend told the Daily Mail that she has been bullied throughout her life and, "She doesn’t show emotion like people without disability, she’s not capable of expressing herself, and when she gets anxious or scared she bites her arm."

He added, "She reacts to stuff in a different way and finds it difficult to express herself, she may get angry for a second ... She writes things down in her diary because she forgets things, and she wrote that she was very, very sorry."

But the judge said, “I accept the explanation from the counsel and that the difficulty [Auriol] would face in custody and afterwards are considerable,” but he decreed that her actions were “not explained by disability”. He ruled that she had no mental disorder or learning difficulties and that her disabilities did not reduce her understanding of right or wrong. He noted, despite what the barrister and probation officer had said, that Auriol had not expressed a word about remorse until today in the pre-sentencing notes.

Well!

Of course I fully understand the grief, and desire for justice, of the victim’s family and also that of the traumatised driver whose car was involved in the death. However, a dispassionate judge should have taken into account that in Auriol’s anxious, physically challenged, cash-strapped, friendless, angry (perhaps mistaken) world, cyclists shouldn’t be on the pavement because it’s unsafe, especially to someone like her with reduced vision and mobility problems. She might not tick all the right boxes to qualify for a diagnosis of mental illness or learning difficulties (except, didn’t the probation officer allude to her "mental state"?), but a lady who's perpetually angry (according to her neighbours) and who has difficulty articulating her emotions has an issue of some sort or other. Or maybe, she just communicates differently from what box-ticking concludes is ‘the norm’. I thought we embraced 'differences' in this country: obviously only the fashionable ones when pressure groups up the bullying-ante.

My summing up of the situation is that an innocent lady lost her life because Auriol might have misunderstood the rules of a pavement that wasn’t fit for purpose and, because of her physical and mental / emotional challenges, overreacted. And now, unless her legal team are successful, Auriol will lose the life that she knows (her home, her belongings, what little confidence she ever had, and doubtless her health) because of the failings of the local authority and the legal system. Her chances of a fair trial were hindered because she communicates differently from narrow expectations.

Referring back to the three criteria for a prison sentence:
• Auriol’s probation officer said she doesn’t pose an ongoing risk to the community.
• She offended because of her reasonable (albeit possibly mistaken) interpretation of what was right and what was wrong and because she’s a naturally angry person. Prison won’t change that.
• She will be less able to function in the community when she is released, and will probably be even angrier, so the rehabilitation objective is a crock.

Auriol Grey is physically disabled with telltale emotional and communication issues, regardless of whether this qualifies her for an official mental health diagnosis. This means she's vulnerable, whatever her crime. She should be protected from the big bad world and from herself, supported and nurtured, which would protect other people as well. Sending her to prison will make her even more vulnerable and, therefore, a greater danger to herself and to others.

In Oscar Wilde’s classic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the eponymous villain trades his soul for eternal youth and beauty; his picture ages instead of him. He pursues an extreme hedonistic lifestyle, his sins as well as his aging gradually disfiguring the picture. At the end, Gray ages instantaneously and dies an ugly old man, whereas the picture returns to its original beauty.

As for Auriol Grey, she remains "childlike" in her mentality, while her metaphorical debauched picture reflects not Auriol, but the injustices metred out to her and others like her.