Dear RLP, In response to your rather uninspiring ‘ugh’ comment, I am going to take this opportunity to set the record straight. Prisoners DO not deserve rights, simply because they are criminals,who chose to abuse UK laws.Every human is born with a brain,and has the capability to make responsible decisions. Remember,we taxpayers fund the UK prison system, including the ‘5 star hotel’ lifestyle of these criminals. Why should society be responsible for the crimes of these cretins?Where is the democratic justice in that? Murderers like Ian Huntley,or nursery paedophile Colin Blanchard,do not have the right to sue and sponge the UK taxpayers for copious amounts of money, when their own actions have landed them in prison. Rewarding criminals with materialism and state rights is antithetical to the concept of crime and justice. Why would you support this policy? Have a wonderful evening. DRP QUEEN.X

I’ll bite.

I support a policy based on respect for human rights, first and foremost.

Secondly, I believe in human redemption and second chances.

Third, I support policies, politics and ideologies that put human beings, preferably those who are born in disadvantageous positions, at the forefront.

Also, the idea of “us the taxpayers”, is used to try and justify all kinds of oppression. I live in the EU. I am a citizen of the European Union, and as such, I am also a taxpayer, and have as much of a say as the conservative ideologues who only keep their self interest in mind when proposing legislation. I, like every other person, have also selfish motives. However, I have made it my life’s mission to try and look beyond those to better serve society as a whole. That is why I am active in local politics and why I spend so much of my time trying to promote the values of inclusiveness and respect that, I am convinced are the only thing that will prevent our further dehumanization and falling pray to extreme ideas.

Also, I believe society is better served through a well rehabilitated criminal that is given chances, rather than by creating a group of social pariahs that can never prove their worth because we keep putting roadblocks in their social re-insertion. Disenfranchised people are hopeless people, people who cannot dream of a better future. Such nihilistic lives can never breed anything positive.

And last, but not least, I believe in a concept that is rarely explored in policy making: I am a proponent of “the politics of empathy”. Because I know that the only difference between me and most petty criminals is just a matter of luck. The luck that afforded me the privilege that was denied to them. The luck that determined my birth in a wealthy family that could afford my multilingual education (amongst a multitude of other privileges that would be too long and tiresome to list here). Because of that luck I was afforded through no merit of my own, I owe it to those less fortunate to do everything I can so that they can try, hard as it might be, catch up with the many obstacles they might have encountered in their lives.

A different world, a world where our inherent value is determined by our worth as “tax payers” is too painful for me to contemplate.

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