Some sanity again in criminal-loving Britain?

Posted by Svigor on February 02, 2005, 11:56 PM | #

Crap, the goddamn software ate my post again.

In short, we have a similar policy here in Charleston, S.C., a “no questions asked” policy concerning deceased intruders.

Posted by Guessedworker on February 03, 2005, 03:46 AM | #

Svigor,

Our policy is, “People will be questioned about what happened. There is going to be statement-taking and interviewing.” And that is one of at least three faults with the present position.  If the immediate circumstances do not clearly show that a crime has been committed by the householder, there is no basis for a criminal investigation.  The householder’s traumatic experience should be brought speedily to an end by the police, not spun into another kind of torture.

The second fault is that no matter how hard the government tries to define “reasonable force” in a victim-friendly way, there cannot be clarity in the heart-pumping, split-second moments of threat.  It is asking too much to expect refined legalistic adumbrations in such extremis.

By way of an example, I heard a phone-in radio programme a good five years ago in which a householder’s wife was telling her tale of woe.  She and her husband had been awoken in the small hours.  He went downstairs and discovered an intruder in the act of urinating on a living room rug.  The householder, who was unarmed, picked up a lamp and struck the intruder on the back of the head.  The man died.  He was found to be carrying a knife.  The householder was, at the time of the radio programme, serving an eight-year prison sentence.

So, have you got to hand your advantage of surprise to an intruder by announcing yourself ... Queensbury Rules and all that?  If not, how hard/soft do you have to hit a man from behind so that he is rendered unconscious but not brain damaged?  To know that would you need to practise the blow to get it just right?  Would you need to familiarise yourself with the characteristics of your weapon, even train with it?  Would you need to rehearse the actual event, like a downhill skier before his race?

The third problem is this: in moments of sudden crisis or threat human beings instinctively sort priorities and exclude all but the principal one.  An intruder’s safety is certainly not the principal householder’s concern.  But nor is fear of potential future prosecution of the householder.  The law, therefore, is inserting itself in an area from which the normal bounds of fear of punishment are - and must be - psychologically excluded.  Since man cannot change his psychology the law really ought to acknowledge its ignorance and withdraw.  The widest-possible remit for self-defence is desirable.

Posted by wintermute on February 03, 2005, 03:55 AM | #

Crap, the goddamn software ate my post again.

Svigor -

Highlight and copy your post before pressing ‘preview’ or ‘submit’. It only takes a second, and will save you much heartache.

I was also losing posts because, in my haste, I was misspelling the mind-control phrases that gw puts in the purple boxes.

Posted by Effra on February 03, 2005, 06:27 AM | #

In a PC-addled society, coded language is de rigeur.

Just as arguments about whether Britain “has room” for immigrants are a polite way for white Britains to say they prefer a white country, so the debate about lawful force is a proxy for most Britons wishing that we still had capital and corporal punishment. If the law will not kill murderers, at least we can inflict death or injury on intruders and get away with it.

But in the days of the birch and the noose, people left their homes unlocked and unbarred at night or when they were out. This is not a sentimental myth: I remember it as customary in rural Sussex until the 1960s.

Of course, there were no Negroids or Asiatics around then either. And thus the two polite modes of discourse intersect.