Life isn't fair.

First published 2oo5.

When I heard the news reports last year, recounting how a prisoner serving time for rape had won £7m in the Lottery, my psychic radar went into overdrive. I had visions of mass tabloid headlines exclaiming exaggerated hostility towards perpetrator Iorworth Hoare. The Sun never fails to disappoint me when it comes to predictability, and I expect media hype once more now that Hoare’s been released back into society, where he’s now free to spend his money as he pleases.

I can just see it now: “We caught the bastard! Then let him go. And now he’s spending his millions. He just bought himself a pair of pants. SHOCKING STUFF!”

Unfortunately, luck and fair aren’t synonyms. My friends in Math Soc will probably argue that luck doesn’t even exist.

I once stayed up all night working on my GCSE coursework, and my teacher was sick the next day, hence the deadline was extended. As you can imagine, I wasn’t particularly happy and extremely envious of everyone who didn’t bother and still got a better grade than me. It’s a childish jealousy parallel to this which is plaguing the minds of those shouting: “Dirty rapist! How dare he win the Lottery? I deserve to win, damn it!” (Incidentally, a woman undergoing cancer treatment won the highest Lottery jackpot ever, just around the same time as Hoare.)

The lottery is what the lottery is. They don’t care if a rich person wins, thereby becoming even richer, so why care when a convicted criminal wins? Does the lottery need a new set of rules to decide who is worthy? (If so, I think poor students need priority.)

Victim support groups have already expressed anger at the win. One feminist writer even went as far to say that Hoare “should give every single penny of that money to rape crisis organisations”.

Why?

Hoare went against British law, and was consequentially punished by imprisonment, not confiscation of earnings. He has paid his metaphorical debt to society; why are people hell bent on suing him/cajoling him into giving the money away? He obtained the ticket, he paid his money and he contravened neither the rules of the National Lottery nor the terms of his punishment. He didn’t even have access to the money until he had finished serving his sentence in full. Fair enough, eh?

Unfortunately, our puritanical society just can’t hack it, and would prefer that High Court judgements be arbitrarily altered to divert such winnings to a criminal's victims.

Exactly how, I wonder, do they envisage the precise definitions of such a law? And where do they draw the line? What if Hoare had bought his ticket before he had been convicted? What if he hadn’t won? Is he only held responsible for all the crimes of his past once he starts getting some dosh? Is prison not enough? Will financially depriving criminals reduce crime?

And precisely how much compensation will make victims feel better?

£7m will not make any difference to someone who was raped 20 years ago. £7m to the prison system will not make any difference to someone who was raped 20 years ago. Taking the money from him will not make any difference to someone who was raped 20 years ago. It takes a lot more than monetary bribery.

As a student, I can see why he doesn’t want to give the money away, even if he is sorry for his crimes. Good luck to him, I say. I optimistically hope he’s realised the error of his ways and manages to avoid the paparazzi as he buys himself some milk and bread.

It’s all very well being self-righteous when one’s never had such large amounts of mind-corrupting cash, but £7m is a lot of money to give away. How many of you would?