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Available for over a year

Today, online bookings go live for the new quarantine system for anyone arriving in the UK from Monday. UK and Irish residents travelling from a list of 33 countries, including Malawi, Peru, South Africa and Portugal will be required to quarantine in government -organised hotels for 10 nights, with security guards accompanying them if they go outside. Quarantine systems are normal as a tool to address issues of public health, but it’s the severity of the penalties attached to this one that has been causing comment. For anyone who arrives from Monday and doesn’t quarantine, a fine of between 5 and 10,000 pounds could be charged. But if a passenger lies on the form they fill in on arrival about their travel history, they face a prison sentence of up to 10 years. Critics have called this disproportionate. 10 years is the maximum sentence for threats to kill, non-fatal poisoning and indecent assault. Lying on a form about where you have been on holiday doesn’t sit well with these appalling offences they say. Its defenders say that in a pandemic, this is not simply a regulatory offence, this deception puts other people’s lives at risk and could itself be described as something like a threat to kill. Whatever individual views on any particular sentence, the concept of proportionality is an important one in the operation of the law. But to be honest, proportionality hasn’t always been a concept popular in religious terms. The Scriptural injunction to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength doesn’t suggest moderation will do. And in reflecting on the life of Jesus, Dr Martin Luther King Junior claimed he wanted to be an extremist; an extremist for love. But this passionate, immodest even extravagant strand of Christian teaching with regard to love, is matched by the commitment to justice that prevents the same energy being focussed on revenge or lust for punishment. Consequences, yes, taught Jesus, especially for the oppression or exploitation of the poor, but the operation of justice with mercy is something ascribed to God as an essential element of who God is and what God does. Protecting people while tempering human instincts for revenge is the business of both law and religion. Healthy spirituality rests in part on the light of reason falling on the practice of religion, making sure that all systems of incentive and punishment are held up to scrutiny by the people asked to abide by them. And that crimes temporal or spiritual are debated in the light, not punished in the dark.