This week was dominated by a certain lady surnamed Bickle. She was dubbed  the queen of prison. The stories we listened to were horrifying. What Bickle did was atrocious. However, whoever let her do what she did is more guilty than her. He or she should be held accountable. The sentence by Mr Justice Mallia, who spoke of suspicion of collusion with Bickle, cannot be left unheeded.

Bickle is now back in her former kingdom where she will not be able to play the queen any longer. Many people believe that what we heard in Court is a description of what is happening today in prison. This is not correct. Bickle was taken to Court as a follow-up to the inquiry which was held at the prisons, if I am not mistaken in 2008, on the order of Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici. A number of steps were taken to rectify the situation. The results of the inquiry were then passed on to the Police and to the Attorney General for them to take any measure that they deem fit.  Bickle's arraignment was one such step.

Bickle was portrayed to be a monster; and her actions were those worthy of a monster. This raises an important question: Did society make it possible for Bickle not to be a "monster"? Was Bickle ever given a fair chance to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty, exploitation and abuse? Was it not her environment that pushed her into the kind of life she lived?

At the tender age of thirteen she was already in trouble with the police. Prostitution was her crime. Can anyone immersed into the kind of environment she was immersed in since a tender age develop into a different person from the way she developed?

Mr Justice Mallia was right in saying that the guilty verdict of the jurors was a condemnation of those responsible for the prisons. He should have gone a step further. Her guilty verdict is, in more senses than one, a condemnation of each and every one of us who benefits from the society we live in but does nothing to make this society a better on.

Who is the real monster: Bickle or our society?