If you read any right wing tabloid there will almost certainly be a story such as ‘How London’s knife crime epidemic is putting terrified tourists off the capital’s hotspots’ or ‘Britain’s softest judges exposed,’ (both of which are, of course, from The Sun). The right-wing media use stories such as Gary Glitter receiving the vaccine before others who are more deserving as a way to perpetuate this idea that we need to ‘get tougher on crime.’ It is a slogan, that along with his xenophobic Brexit rhetoric, won Boris Johnson the election. Thus, to not include prisoners on the designated priority list assigned to age and health would be to further disadvantage these communities who are already sceptical of the vaccine due to a generational distrust in the government for these very reasons.Īlthough it may seem as though I am getting sidetracked from Gary Glitter and the question at hand, this all feeds into a wider debate of sentencing, rehabilitation and punishment. The BAME population of the UK is 13% yet they make up 27% of the prison population with black men being 26% more likely than white men to be remanded in custody. To write off the prison population as undeserving of a vaccine before the righteous population outside of the prison is a nonsensical self-sacrifice based on pride and intolerance.įurthermore, the Lammy Review of 2017 made it crystal clear that minorities are overrepresented in prisons. Prisons are not isolated places - officers travel in and out each day, prisoners are released on a daily basis across the country and they receive deliveries regularly. This includes prisons where Coronavirus cases have increased dramatically over the beginning of the year in line with the rest of the country. It is estimated that the Coronavirus vaccine will only be effective if at least 80% of the country is vaccinated. They have chosen a man so vile that it is hard to disagree with, however, where do you draw the line? Is it just paedophiles and rapists who do not receive the vaccine or are murderers included in this immoral lineup of the damned? What about ex-convicts who have been released since committing these crimes? Or, to make this selection more simplistic do we simply say all prisoners, no matter their age or condition, must be offered the vaccine after the rest of the population has been vaccinated? The issue here is that Gary Glitter has been utilised in a way that will encourage people into agreeing that prisoners should be low priority for the vaccine. In this period of time when many people are concerned that the government is using lockdown as a way to increase absolute control, it is absurd that we would then request that they withhold the vaccine based on their own morality criteria. However, the very idea that the government should be creating a priority list that includes the morality of its citizens based on their convicted crimes is a mandate for authoritarianism.
Let me first say that Gary Glitter is a despicable and perverted paedophile who deserves to be in prison for the heinous crimes he has committed. The very notion that this even needs to be raised is a shocking indictment of our collective lust for revenge. This question was raised by Piers Morgan on ITV’s This Morning and it fascinated me as a debate. Does Gary Glitter deserve the vaccine? The criminal justice system and our lust for revenge over rehabilitation
0 kommentar(er)
