THE essence, or morality, of modern day policing is no longer about catching criminals, it is about protecting the vulnerable. One in 14 Scots have been labelled as vulnerable and stuck on the police Vulnerable Person Database. You may be one of them.

In part of what is a wider change in law and politics, citizens once assumed to be robust or having a level of subjective capacity have, over the last few decades, been reimagined and encouraged to think of themselves as vulnerable.

Sounds caring? Perhaps. It is also the new form authoritarianism takes.

So called vulnerable groups, which is essentially everyone apart from able bodied, young(ish) white men, get special attention. So for example, all gay men are vulnerable, all women are vulnerable, all black people are vulnerable. Regardless of the fact that most people within these categories would feel it a patronising caricature to be so labelled by the state in this way, they are.

What should be seen as a dehumanising and potentially dangerous prejudice about people is unfortunately part of what it means to be enlightened today. Being gay or a woman, it seems, means you need extra protection from the police. It’s as if certain old bigoted ideas about people have somehow returned in a new "progressive" form.

Once vulnerable of course, you risk being infantilised, with any potential dispute you have being taken out of your hands. As a vulnerable person you clearly lack the capacity to make decisions on your own behalf, you must be protected from your neighbour, your partner, from everybody. You don’t, can’t, know your own mind.

But, in case you’re feeling left out, don’t. The category of vulnerability has become a new universal in law. Discussing the correct way to use laws against antisocial behaviour, for example, Lord Hutton explained that we need to think of communities as being represented by "weak and vulnerable people".

Time and again we find this category of vulnerability appearing in policy documents, law and police practice guides but it goes way beyond this.

Almost all institutions and businesses have adopted this language and approach. Consequently the poor are now vulnerable, as are students and of course all children are vulnerable, all needing greater protection from the people around them - from neighbours, other students and of course from parents.

As a result, we are all being re-educated in the new caring etiquette, being transformed from people who once had a thicker skin, could turn the odd cheek or knew the difference between sticks and stones and name calling.

The new authoritarians don’t wear jackboots they wear kid gloves and they’re here to protect us from everyone and everything, including ourselves. At the heart of today’s brave new world lies vulnerability.