Pauline Campbell, the prizewinning campaigner for greater care of young women in prison, has been acquitted at the North Avon Magistrates Court of obstructing the highway. Peter Thornton QC acted pro bono in her defence. Former lecturer Mrs Campbell, a Howard League for Penal Reform Trustee, had been charged with blocking the road by stopping prison vans from entering Eastwood Park prison.

Mrs Campbell's protest was at the death in the prison of 26 year old Caroline Powell, a remand prisoner and mother of five young children. District Judge Parsons found that Mrs Campbell had no intention of obstructing the highway. He accepted that Mrs Campbell had gone there to "express your genuinely held concerns over the deaths of women in custody" and that she was "in the vanguard of public opinion seeking to bring about change".