FREE DAZE

If you feel strongly about the below and would like to see justice on Gary’s behalf, then please show some support and sign your name. To Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill after your quote in the Scottish Sunday Herald were you renewed your pledge to avoid sending less serious offenders to prison after a campaign was launched to free a graffiti writer from one of the longest sentences for the crime handed down in Scotland, Please find attached the petition to see Gary Shields early release. Gary ‘Daze’ Shields was sentenced to 28 months on the 18th of March 2008 for "£270,000 of damage by spray painting graffiti on trains and public property." No one is denying accountability but the severity of the sentence should definately be in question. When disproportionate sentences are dished out you have to wonder what factors are influencing judgement, as clearly the punishment does not fit the crime. The language used to report was of course, deliberately provocative. Daze is in no way connected to "A Gang". He may be part of a collective or a crew but gang of course, is used to suggest violence & is the hacks way of misdirecting & demonising. For the record Daze is an amiable 21 year old and as far from a "Yob" as it is possible to get. The Newspapers reported that Daze "... is now in prison after he admitted eight offences of malicious damage at Ayr Sheriff Court.” When in actual fact only ONE was brought up in court, the only one he had admitted to. A breakdown of exactly how the figure of £270,000 in damages was derived would make for interesting reading also. The sentence was welcomed by British Transport Police. Detective Chief Inspector Jim McKelvie said: "This sends out the signal that graffiti is nothing other than vandalism.” How any reasonable human being could deliver & welcome a sentence of that severity is more damning of those involved in the passing & supporting of the sentence than it ever could be of a guy writing his name on a wall or the side of a train. FREE DAZE