Castles

Though we frequently delve into our beloved tech gossip at Avant-Garde, we occasionally like to engage with ‘serious’ news too. Fun and games are all well and good but we wanted to draw attention to some real issues, highlight the news that matters to us and inspire debate amongst our readers. Last time our segment was on gaming addiction, this time we’re looking at whether a man’s home is indeed his castle?

Along with the media’s coverage of the Conservative party conference last week (that’s right we’re starting off political: debates and controversies abound!) were the early week headlines that covered Tory activists who welcomed changes to the law giving more support for homeowners to protect their homes. Yes, there were other important things to take from the conference regardless which side of the political fence you fall on but this story was good for a number of reasons.

First up it’s one we can all relate to. Hypothetically what would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night and an intruder was breaking in? Perhaps a stealthy descent down the stairs in your boxers holding (insert respective bat/ decorative samurai sword/ tennis racket here)? Of course what you do then has always been a bit of a grey area. Any action you take has to be ‘reasonable’ and proportionate to the level of threat posed and though the law does make certain allowance for ‘the heat of the moment’ the possibility of prosecution, if you excessively hurt or kill someone, remains.

Andy Ferrie and wife Tracey were held in custody for three days after two burglars were shot in their house last month. Munir Hussain was sentenced for two and half years when he chased an escaping burglar, who had tied up and threatened his family, down the road and beat him with a cricket bat. Famously in 1999 you have the case of Tony Martin who shot and killed an intruder in his home. He was jailed for life but this was reduced to a sentence of manslaughter and he served three years in prison.

What Justice Secretary Chris Grayling confirmed last week was the support of ministers to change the law at the first available opportunity and provide more support to the homeowner in such instances. He commented “None of us really knows how frightening it would be if we were confronted by a burglar in the middle of the night, or how terrified we’d feel if we thought our family was in danger…right now you’re still not sure the law is on your side…That’s why we are going to deal with this issue once and for all!”

 Justice Secretary MP Chris Grayling

In a survey conducted by the Telegraph over 5000 people voted on the question: “Should householders only be prosecuted if they use ‘grossly disproportionate’ force to protect their homes?” Over 95% voted ‘Yes, the law should be wholly on the side of the householder’ with only a little under 5% saying ‘No, the law works at the moment and doesn’t need changing’. With stats like these it seems that quite a considerable portion of people back the idea that when a burglar breaks into their home they’ll have the law fully on their side rather than the intruders, without the ‘umm maybe I shouldn’t hit them too hard with my baseball bat’ to get them out.

Except, I’m not totally convinced. That isn’t to say that I don’t agree that when an intruder comes into your home he deserves everything that comes to him, it’s just there are other sides to this too. Patrick Strudwick made a fair comment on the Guardian’s news site that reacting against criminals with disproportionate force could infact cause more harm than good; your chance of ‘surviving’ an encounter drops dramatically if you engage in a conflict (same logic applied if you were being mugged). Long term if criminals come to anticipate and expect violent reactions they will ‘better’ prep themselves to get the job done. Facing intruders with weapons will become the norm, and even if you do successfully protect your home by ‘bashing a burglar’ what if you kill them in the process? You won’t be prosecuted but are you prepared to have a person’s death on your conscience? Certainly food for thought.

Narrow down the number of burglary cases where the homeowners are in whilst it happens, to the ones that actually confront, to the ones that inflict harm on the intruder, to the ones that are actually taken to court, the resulting figure is actually quite small. I think roughly less than 20 cases of this have occurred in the past 10-15 years. Why mention this? Because the idea of a man’s home as his castle and his right to protect that home is a popular one, but the instances where it’s put to the test don’t actually occur very often. When they do public outcry inevitably ensues to change the law. But over the years the law has already significantly shifted. Consider that Lord Judge the Lord Chief Justice, commented last month that householders had the right to use force “to get rid of the burglar”. Comments like that will have ramifications in court rooms across the UK for years to come (that’s what I get for hanging around law students at Uni).

Clearly a change in the law giving more support to homeowners in burglary cases is long overdue, the public want it, the law wants it, and the government wants it. BUT we have to be careful mainly beacuse 1) If we start shifting the goalposts where will the new boundaries exactly lie and 2) we should keep in mind despite it’s popularity and ‘knee-jerk’ support reaction this was pitched to ultimately serve a bigger political agenda.

In any case it just seemed like an interesting piece of news that caught my attention and if nothing else it did give us the basis of this nice cartoon from The Guardian's Steve Bell depicting Boris Johnson stealing the show – love a bit of political satire.

Any thoughts?

Angelic Rogue

Read the BBC’s Q and A here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19886504
Read Patrick’s comment here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/09/grayling-burglars-disproportionate-farce
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