| Locke. |
16-10-2014 10:14 AM |
Should Ched Evans be allowed to sign for a Football Club again?
He was convicted on a 5 year sentence in April 2012 and will be released this week.
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Evans and another footballer, Clayton McDonald, were tried at the Crown Court at Caernarfon after being indicted of the rape of a 19-year-old woman, who was deemed too drunk to consent,[38] at a hotel near Rhyl in May 2011. Evans was convicted on 20 April 2012 and was sentenced to five years imprisonment. He will be eligible for release after serving half of that sentence.[36][39][40] In August 2012, Evans was refused leave to appeal against the conviction, and he appealed to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales,[41] this decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal in London in November.[42] Evans continues to maintain his innocence,[43] and in November 2013 recruited a new legal team to attempt to clear his name.[44] He is currently serving his sentence at HM Prison Wymott.
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Footballer Ched Evans will leave prison this week, keen to get back to work after serving half of a five-year sentence for raping a 19-year-old woman in a hotel room. As I write, more than 140,000 people have signed a petition stating that Evans should not be allowed to return to professional football. But his former club Sheffield United are reportedly interested in re-signing the striker.
Moral arguments have been presented on both sides. Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, has pointed out that the law does not prevent ex-prisoners from working or resuming their old lives after release: “As a trade union we believe in the rule of law … besides that, [Evans] still wants to contribute to society. If he earns money he’ll pay taxes, those taxes will go to help people who maybe can’t get a job.”
There’s a certain consistency to Taylor’s first line of argument. If we respect the law that has found Evans guilty of rape, then shouldn’t we also respect the legal process that imposes a prison sentence, after which the convicted person is free to return to society?
Taylor’s claim about the social benefits of Evans’ return to work, meanwhile, appeals to two quite different kinds of moral argument: one based on motivation and the other based on consequences. The suggestion that “Evans wants to contribute to society” encourages us to regard him as a person of good will – and philosopher Immanuel Kant makes this concept of a good will or pure moral intention the sole criterion of morality. So Kant would deny that the tax revenue from Evans’ wages has any moral relevance, since only motivations, and not consequences, have moral worth. A strict utilitarian, in contrast, would take into account all social benefits arising from his potential return to Sheffield United.
Those campaigning against Evans emphasise a different set of issues. Katie Russell of Rape Crisis England has stated that her organisation “recognises the right of any convicted criminal to return to work after they’ve completed their sentence”. But for her, the cultural context gives this case a distinctive moral significance. Football is a high-profile, prestigious industry: players are celebrated and revered, not least by boys and young men. And with this public influence comes social responsibility.
If it were to bring Evans back into the team, Russell argues, Sheffield United would be failing “to send a very strong message that rape and sexual violence – and violence against women and girls more broadly – will not be tolerated within football”. According to this logic, the right to return to work can be sacrificed for the sake of a strong statement about cultural values. In other words, in this instance the ends justify the means.
Interest in this case, as with many morally ambiguous situations, arises from a deeper concern about what kind of people we should be, and what kind of society we want to live in. For Plato, this was the substance of all moral questions. One of the important messages in his Republic is the unbreakable connection between the personal and the social, the private and the public, the soul and the state. Cases like that of Evans, then, go to the heart of whether we want to be a society that promotes forgiveness – that allows people to make mistakes and move on – or one that chooses role models who embody gentleness and respect for others.
If it is hard to give a clear answer to this question, that is precisely because both sides are so compelling. Surely we should not give up on either forgiveness or providing positive role models. But the sting in the tail is that, however deep the moral dilemma, a practical decision needs to be made.
I do not know enough about what happened in that hotel room, nor about Evans’ attitude now, to say what should be done. But putting myself in the position of those who have to decide about his career, I see that the way through this problem involves posing the moral questions to Evans himself.
I would ask him if he felt able to exemplify values of dignity and kindness. His commitment to this would make it easier for me to take the stand for forgiveness. After all, we should not have to choose between these two ideals. Both can be realised in this case, but only if those involved take on the responsibility of living up to them.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...-sentence-rape |
