On a cold, frosty winter's night in early January, I was standing outside a women's prison about 20 miles from where I live in Bath. I was not alone; we were about 300, mainly middle-aged or older.

We convened first in a pub close by to receive our instructions and walked in the dark, holding lanterns, for about half a mile, in an orderly procession. We were there to celebrate and protest. Gaie Delap was aware of our presence outside as she observed her 78th birthday inside the prison, as we were doing. The prison authorities had acceded to the request for us to be there, outside the entrance to the floodlit campus, fenced off with razor wire. Inside were approximately 380 women, many of whom, in Gaie's judgement, should not be there but rather supported in the community whether for drug addiction or mental health issues or defending themselves against domestic abuse. And then there was Gaie, a retired teacher, grandmother, and indeed a sister-in-law of a former director of Oxfam in Bangladesh, which is how I came to know Gaie, having also taught her niece as a student. Her niece also spent some time in Bangladesh, working in Dhaka slums with Proshika. Gaie's brother, Mick, my student's father, had worked with the Africa desk of the BBC World Service. He campaigned tirelessly for Gaie's release. I record all this to demonstrate that this is a family with a strong social conscience, and thus not your typical prison inmate!

Last year, Gaie was sentenced to 20 months in prison for being part of the Just Stop Oil protest, which blocked traffic for a while on the M25 motorway that encircles London. Some of her fellow protesters were given longer sentences, up to five years. Under sentencing practices in the UK, one can be released earlier and electronically tagged with a leg or wrist bracelet. This ensures that the conditions of release are honoured, usually subject to an HDC (a home detention curfew,) from 7pm to 7am. The reader should also be aware that in the UK, following years of Tory government neglect, the prison capacity is seriously overstretched. The new Labour government were approving early releases for quite serious offences during this winter, much to the disgust of the hypocritical Tory press. Gaie was released under this scheme on November 18, 2024 and re-arrested 20 days later just before Christmas and recalled to prison.

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What went wrong? The UK government sub-contracts the tagging service to a large private company, Serco, which provides a multitude of services to the government across justice, immigration, defence, transport, health, and citizen services. It describes itself as bringing "the right people, the right technology and the right partners to create innovative solutions that make positive impact and address some of the most urgent and complex challenges in the modern world." Well, not in this case! Tags are usually placed around the ankle, but Gaie had a medical condition in her legs which inhibited that option. But she had wrists! However, Serco could not access an appropriately sized bracelet tag for her wrists. So, just before Christmas, she was re-arrested and sent to a different prison, nearer to her home in Bristol. This was despite Gaie indicating her agreement that she had offended under the law and had accepted her sentence while also indicating that she had no intention of offending again. By any amount of common sense, this nearly 78-year-old grandmother was not a threat to the public.

This is why more than 300 of us were outside the entrance to her prison on a cold, frosty night in early January, engaged in a silent, dignified protest, though also singing "Happy Birthday" to her.

Three weeks later, the news appeared that her 20 days of "freedom" (from late November until mid-December, just before Christmas), through no fault of her own, were deemed "illegal," and that these days would be added to her sentence before her next "early release" date in March this year. In the UK, we are familiar with Charles Dickens's expression "the law is an ass!" Well, it certainly has been in this case. And then in the first week of February came the news that a wrist tag had been sourced, and Gaie could be released on licence!

In 1994, in Bangladesh: Whose Ideas, Whose Interests, I included a chapter on the problem of the franchise state. I then argued that the solution to good governance was not to franchise out essential, rights-based, government functions to private profit or not-for-profit organisations. At that time, I was concerned about the paradox of donors supporting good governance on the one hand, while funding NGOs to undertake essential state functions as voluntary rather than statutory organisations. That separation prevents governments from being held accountable, as governments defend themselves by blaming the contractor, while the contractor asserts their compliance with the contract and denies responsibility for failure. Since Margaret Thatcher, we have had that problem in spades in the UK; blame for failure is bounced around between ministries and private contractors, between policy ideas and those responsible for implementation.

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In Gaie Delap's case, Serco failed to uphold their contract. Will it be prosecuted or fined for this failure? Unlikely. It employs many lawyers. Instead, the absurdity of the law even adds 20 days to Gaie's sentence, when just a shred of common sense would dictate otherwise. The UK is experiencing several current such examples of Alice in Wonderland: the post office scandal with thousands of sub-postmasters prosecuted for accounting discrepancies because the software provider provided a faulty service with compensation still owed after years of enquiry and judicial findings against both the post office and its contractor; poor regulation of blood quality in transfusions, unresolved after decades, claimants with blood infected by HIV or hepatitis C dying through old age before claims are met; Andrew Malkinson imprisoned for 17 years for a murder he did not commit, because the contracted review service (Criminal Cases Review Commission) ignored new evidence a decade ago, and now that he has received some upfront modest compensation, he is in danger of his entitlement to social housing being denied. How does Malkinson stand up to this unholy alliance between the bureaucratic state and corporate interests? No chance to do so given monopoly lawyers' fees and the withdrawal of publicly funded Legal Aid. Absurdity is reinforced by exclusion. Rights denied.

Dr Geof Wood is a development anthropologist and author of several books and numerous journal articles, with a regional focus on South Asia. He is also emeritus professor of international development at the University of Bath, UK.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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