Prison invited a drag queen to perform for sex offenders to celebrate LGBT prisoners

[FunStork]

HMP Moorland ran an LGBT themed sports day featuring Pride flags and booked a drag queen to perform to inmates.

This was to celebrate the diversity of inmates, many of whom identify as LGBT.

More than half of the inmates are convicted sex offenders, many paedophiles.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/09/prison-lgbt-sports-day-drag-queen-moorland-sex-offenders/

Change the headline from drag queens to go go dancers. Do the supporters still support that?

I object because drag queens - mysogynistic, sex clowns - as I saw described on here, are performing to men who have raped and sexually assaulted. I assume the majority of the people they assaulted were women and children. Drag queens show unpleasant, sexist caricatures of women.

Giving prisoners depression by not providing them with any entertainment or only "sombre" entertainment would probably be a larger issue for public finances in the long term than wasting some money on amusement, because depressed people use more NHS resources and are less likely to work. Ignoring the question of what offenders deserve, or whether this particular performer was appropriate for a public organisation to hire, it doesn't make sense financially for society to bore prisoners into a worse mental state.

If only the poor bastards own actions hadn't put them behind bars in the first place. I'd play my violin but it's so tiny I've lost it.

That is the one point that is worth considering.

I would say thought, that as rape culture is endemic and so deeply embedded in society, drag queens performing for sex offenders is kind of the thin end of the wedge.

I'm more concerned with drag being used in schools and aimed at kids, if we are considering the harms of perpetuating misogynist caricatures of women.

I’ve had various family members who have been in prison and they never had anything like this. Not that they would have wanted it anyway. But they were all category A so were treated like they were actually in prison.

Agree having worked in a mens prison for 7 years.
They have been judged and are now doing their time. Everyones just getting through the days as best they can.
And anyway we had zero gay paedophiles in the prison I was in so I very much doubt they would have found drag queens titilating.
A Shirley Temple inpersonator on the other hand........

Have they not been punished enough?

This! There must be better options.

It's incorrect to say Cat C prisoners are low risk. I work in a Cat C sex offenders prison and the Cat C sex offender population is huge - they are low risk to officers and each other but high risk to the general public.

And we have loads of gay and bisexual sex offenders as well.

Prisons do have a lot of diversity content and support for different groups - there will usually be support groups for foreign nationals, ex-servicemen, LGBTQ, gypsies and travellers, older prisoners, neurodiversity, etc etc. All of these will have their own meetings and events.

At the prison I work at nobody would be so daft as to hire a drag queen for an event as they would be alive to the sexual element as well as it being on the front pages of the newspapers. But I can see someone at a Cat C that wasn't all sex offenders running a Pride event and not fully thinking it through. Clearly other staff did see the event as inappropriate and that's why it's in the news.

I don't really like to think about cultural programs in prisons as just entertainment.

It's about facilitating activities that help people find positive meaning and value.

One of the things I do IRL is run a music program for homeless people which involves songwriting and playing music together. Most of the people who attend are addicts and a lot have been in prison for one reason or another. It's something I feel really strongly about - many people who end up in the prison system are missing some important building blocks in their lives, including the ability to reflect on their lives and behaviours, how they impact others, and what gives or destroys meaning in their lives. (Or, they have lost them because of drugs or being immersed in other vices which are fundamentally soul-destroying.) I think the arts are precisely about doing those things and integrating personality, and actually sports can be in another way.

However - the idea of taking a bunch of men, in a sexually deprived environment, many of whom have or have had sexual problems including addictive behaviours, violence, fetishism, and toxic sexual relationships, and having a drag show as their "cultural enrichment" seems absolutely and completely nutty.

If some of them need to learn to be at peace with being gay men, that is not the way to accomplish that.

You’ve completely missed the point. In fact, you’ve argued against a point that nobody even made.
This isn’t a crèche, a workplace diversity initiative or a holiday resort. It’s a prison.
Prison is supposed to be unpleasant. That’s rather the point. It exists to punish offenders, protect the public and, where possible, rehabilitate them. It doesn’t exist to provide themed entertainment because inmates might otherwise have a dreary afternoon.
The fact you immediately leapt to, “Well, was the drag performance appropriate?” completely sidesteps the actual issue. Nobody said drag queens are inherently inappropriate. The question is why prisoners—many of them convicted of appalling offences—are being provided with organised entertainment at all.
You seem oddly preoccupied with ensuring convicted criminals have a positive experience in custody. I’m more interested in the victims whose lives they destroyed.
Somehow we’ve reached the stage where questioning prison entertainment is controversial, while expecting prison to actually feel like prison is apparently the radical position.
If your instinct is to ask, “How can we make prison a nicer place?”, then I think you’ve fundamentally misunderstood what prison is for.

Exactly this!!!

Just to follow up on my earlier post (which I can’t edit now), I’ve expanded on what I was trying to say .

This isn’t a crèche or a holiday camp. It’s a prison??!! Like FFS!!!

It’s meant to punish, protect the public and, where possible, rehabilitate—not provide organised entertainment like some kind of Butlin’s weekend for adults!!

The convicts / offenders; are not soldiers on the front line in WWII in need of morale-boosting performances, and they are not toddlers who require entertainment to get through the day.

Whether drag is “appropriate” is a distraction. The real question is why prisoners—many convicted of very serious offences—are being entertained at all.

They should be doing physical work that contributes to the economy, especially when they are costing so much in legal fees, food and accommodation—all funded by the public.

You seem focused on improving an already nice life for offenders.. that we all as tax payers have to support…

And I’m thinking about the victims, who don’t get anything to lift their spirits.

If your instinct is to make prison nicer, you’ve misunderstood what it’s for.

It was presumably pride month. Pride has nothing to do with paedophiles and sex offenders

Thanks, helpful insight. Be interesting to see whose idea this was and the rationale.

Teaching prisoners to read, write and understand maths is important. These will genuinely improve their opportunities.

And increase the likelihood that they won't reoffend - many prisoners are functionally illiterate -
The most recent data published by the Ministry of Justice shows that 57% of adult prisoners taking initial assessments had literacy levels below those expected of an 11-year-old.
Prison education: a review of reading education in prisons - GOV.UK
and that's going to be a big disadvantage when they leave prison, ideally rehabilitated and prepared to be a law-abiding citizen.

I take ladykelvin's point that Whether drag is “appropriate” is a distraction, but I don't go along with
If your instinct is to make prison nicer, you’ve misunderstood what it’s for.

I wouldn't say I want to make prison 'nicer' but I would say that they should be
basic, no-frills, definitely nothing fancy, but clean, well-managed and with the possibility of education and rehabilitation so the period of imprisonment does something more than keeping prisoners off the street, before returning them to the street as bad or worse than they went in.

The deserved 'not-nice' bit about being a prisoner is being deprived of your liberty; it shouldn't be living in badly controlled, violent, over-crowded squalor.
And it shouldn't exclude moments of distraction and entertainment - not just for the sake of the prisoners, but for the atmosphere in the prison, where occasional entertainment is helpful for reducing tension.

My attitude to prisoners is probably shaped by my religious upbringing, where we were taught the 'corporal works of mercy' like feeding the hungry, and one of them was
Visit the imprisoned – offering companionship, support, and spiritual encouragement.
I suppose that would be considered being too 'nice' to them.

This articulates my unease about this particular form of entertainment. I absolutely think prisoners should have some entertainment at times prisons are grim but this reinforces contempt for, and hyper sexualised women

I don't really see what's wrong with that? Unless people think that everyone in prison should either be out digging a hole in shackles in the rain or staring at the walls 24/7? They are human beings. It's punishment and also hopefully rehabilitation.