Wednesday - December 16, 2009

Who will go in to bat for crime’s victims?  A question from a liberal?  Yup. Wonder of wonde

You may recall a story I posted yesterday, with some anger as usual, about a homeowner sent to jail after braining a gremlin who with others, broke into his home, tied up the family, threatened to kill them and then proceeded to rob them.  Homeowner chases gang, he and brother catch one and wack him with a cricket bat.  Idiot judge says he went beyond self defense once he chased the bad guys away. 

So I was reading The Times today which has the reputation of being liberal altho more and more some of their correspondents seems to be taking a somewhat conservative approach to things.  I am referring to the Times of London.  Not N.Y.
Well, what to my wandering eyes should appear, but an editorial comment from a liberal which reads as, well, reasonable.  Good gosh. Reasonable? From a liberal?  Could be.  You decide.  Although I do not agree that it may be “just” to jail anyone who beats up a burglar.  But the public sure does feel betrayed.

The majority of citizens in this country want the rope back.  Fat chance of that with the left in charge of everything.

It may be just to jail a man who beats up a burglar, but don’t be surprised if the public feel betrayed

Antonia Senior

Three masked men break into your home. They tie up your family and threaten to kill you and your children. They force you to crawl from room to room, as they rob you and ransack your house. You escape and find yourself in possession of a cricket bat. What would you do?

Munir Hussain, a businessman from High Wycombe, chased the burglars down the street with his brother, Tokeer. They caught the intruders and beat them. One, Walid Salem, was hit by a cricket bat with such ferocity that it broke in three pieces, and he was left with brain damage.

Justice was meted out. Then the law intervened. Hussain and his brother were sentenced to 30 and 39 months respectively for grievous bodily harm with intent. Salem escaped jail with a two-year supervision order. Salem, a career criminal, left hospital after two weeks, and was subsequently arrested for an alleged credit card fraud.

The law decided that it is one thing to strike when you are being struck; it is quite another to chase your attacker down the street and beat him senseless. Morally, as well as legally, the distinction looks clear. Hussein’s family were no longer in danger, and neither was he, when the cricket bat came down on Salem’s head. Justice must be measured by the thump of a gavel, not by the thwack of willow on skull.

So why, then, if law and morality agree, does this case cause such consternation?

A man we can identify with — a businessman, with a family life and no history of violence — is confronted by the criminals who stalk our middle-class nightmares. We all wonder what our reaction would be. We all know there are depths of our own soul we have never plumbed, and we are terrified and curious in equal measures.

We are attacked, and the first response is an extreme physiological reaction to our environment that cannot be faked. Charles Darwin, in describing the symptoms of fear, talks of the crouching, defensive- aggressive posture of the terrorised. Fear shakes us out of complacency; readies us for the fight. After the fear, sometimes, comes rage.

There is the absolute fear and incandescent rage of the victim, which can spill over into violence. But we all suffer from a low-level fear and a simmering rage that we are reminded of by this case. We are scared of career criminals like Salem; he is a modern bogeyman. The unfairness of his lenient sentence feeds our rage, as does the failure of the police to catch his accomplices.

But what do we do with this fear and rage? The first option is to think through the morality of vigilantism and conclude that, if a society has any aspirations to civility, the demands of the law must outweigh the desire for revenge. The second option is to think, screw the morality — Salem deserved it and Hussain is a hero.

The second option is the eye-for-eye, tit-for-tat logic that appeals to the supporters of capital punishment. It’s the old “How would you feel if your child was killed?” argument in favour of state-sponsored execution. It puts personal, individual instincts ahead of a sober, impersonal reflection on the State’s powers.

Public opinion is firmly in favour of capital punishment; a referendum would bring back the noose tomorrow. I would expect a similar public response to Hussain’s imprisonment. Put it to the public vote, just after X Factor or I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! and Hussain would be free, while Salem would be subjected to a series of bushtucker-trial equivalents.

“Dial 03 now,” shouts the cheery presenter, “and watch this career criminal be hit for six! Dial 04, and watch him eat a kangaroo’s anus, to win four stars’ worth of public forgiveness.” The court of public opinion would act very differently to Reading Crown Court.

There is an increasing dissonance between the views of the majority and those of the minority who frame and police the laws. On crime and on immigration the gulf is at its widest. Many in the majority would be justified in believing themselves to be citizens, not of a democracy, but of a liberal oligarchy.

A small band of the liberal elite makes the laws, disputes them in court, writes about them in papers and chatters about them on the box. It makes me both relieved and squeamish — relieved that my nice, liberal view of the world prevails, and squeamish that its execution is so inherently illiberal and anti- democratic. It’s a “we know better” political philosophy whose only defence is a plaintive cry, “But we do!” What’s the logical, intellectual justification for our stranglehold on this democracy? There is none that I can think of; I’m just glad to be on the inside, looking out.

But those who disagree with us are, much to the bafflement of many liberals, not stupid. They recognise the gulf, and feel unrepresented, There is a belief that the criminal justice system and the police are not interested in the victims of crime.

This environment makes vigilantism more likely, not less.

If you work on the automatic assumption that the men who threatened your family will escape justice, how tempting to reach for the cricket bat. What would you do?

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 12/16/2009 at 11:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Justice - LACK OF • UK •  
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