A debt toupee to society

because Smith is also concerned about what he sees as an unfairness involving justice, penalty and a man’s hair.

He has taken to court to argue his human rights were breached when Corrections took away his hairpiece. He was, at the point of separation, a recaptured escapee and he contends that having his baldness exposed through national media upon capture was a gratuitous humiliation.

The wig, see, was originally designed to help with his self-esteem and self-confidence. Smith was convicted of heinous crimes for which many of his civil rights have rightly been yanked. Prisoners are entitled to challenge undue meannesses, even so.

Smith maintains there’s low risk of his hairpiece being used to offend the king, either by causing harm or smuggling contraband.

The counter-argument might be that a man with a record of escaping shouldn’t be given too much in the way of easy appearance-changing options.

In any case, he’s massively subverted the prospect of the wider public taking his complaint the least bit seriously by simultaneously arguing that the hairpiece is an ‘‘artwork’’ protected by the right of freedom of expression.

We look forward, we really do, to other inmates taking up that argument

Like: ‘‘I’m a sculptor, your honour. Those knotted sheets dangling from my cell window are an installation.’’

Or: ‘‘My oeuvre is metalwork. I simply must have that ocy-acetylene cutting gear at the ready at all times, for when the muse takes me.’’

Or: ‘‘When they found me on the cellblock roof I was engaged in interpretive dance. You’re a Philistine to suggest otherwise.’’

Or: ‘‘That poster of Rita Hayworth is my homage to cinema. You have no right to look behind it.’’

If this part of Smith’s argument reminds us of anything, it’s the question that arose when another inmate, Stephen Hudson, made the legal claim in 2010 that his human rights had been breached because prison staff took his Cosmopolitan magazine.the one comparing natural breasts to those with implants.

Is masturbation a right or a privilege? That argument rages on, for all we know.

Let the record show, however, that Hudson won that case.