In February, police officers approached 58-year-old Lorraine Kent as she sat at the double doors by the underground car park of a Tesco in Streatham, south London. They asked her to explain herself. Kent wasn’t wearing a mask, or “adhering to Covid-19 guidelines”. It was clear she was begging. During their conversation, a passerby had offered some money. Kent, who lives in sheltered accommodation, was issued with a £200 fine. It wasn’t a sum she had the means to pay.
In June, Westminster magistrates court ordered Kent to pay £2,500 in further fines and costs in absentia. It remains a mystery exactly what such a punitive outcome was supposed to achieve in the name of public health – or for a vulnerable woman already experiencing destitution. Her case is by no means unique.
Kent’s fine was handed down in the teeth of the third national lockdown. The restrictions she was charged with breaching no longer exist – and are apparently unlikely to return. So why was her case rammed through the already desperately stretched court system, and where does extorting money from…
