ANOTHER VOICE
When the rule of law finds itself in a panic
AUBERON WAUGH
There is one aspect of the cause celebre, in which two men, an engineer and a self- employed builder, were sent to prison by Norwich Crown Court last week, which does not seem to have received sufficient attention. We all read how Duncan Bond, 35, a man of unblemished record, found that his child's motorbike had been stolen from his garden shed — along with his own scrambling motorbike and all his power tools — on the morning of the day he intended to give it to his son as a birthday present.
Neighbours in the village of Harleston, Norfolk, who saw the crime described the thieves' car — a beaten-up white Cortina. Bond traced it without difficulty to the next-door village of Dickleburgh, of some 1,000 inhabitants, famous locally for its teenage crime. It was standing outside the house of Gavin Last, 17, who cheerfully owns up to various petty crimes, but denies having stolen the Bond motorbikes. Bond, who had been advised by the police to let them know if he heard any rumours, took a friend, Mark Chapman, 29, also of unblem- ished record, to interrogate young Gavin about his activities.
We read how they tied his wrists, bun- dled him into a van and waved a knife in front of him. This does indeed seem some- what excessive behaviour. The youth was understandably frightened, and thought he was going to be killed. Later, the two men were charged with kidnapping and received prison sentences of five years each. Perhaps they will serve no more than 30 months. Perhaps they will serve 40. I do not know. In either case, I feel that the sentence omits an important factor: that the so-called kid- napping, while they held the youth for questioning, lasted only 20 minutes. It was not a sadistic revenge that they were con- ducting, merely a heavy-handed enquiry. They let him go after 20 minutes when he swore he was innocent.
Under these circumstances, to send Mr Bond to prison for five years, as the victim of a crime which the forces of law and order had been unable to solve, seems more sinister than silly. It might be inter- preted as terrible warning to all Britons not to try and protect their property at a time when the police are manifestly unable to do so — in Norfolk, as in most of the country- side, policing has been virtually withdrawn. Police movements are controlled by com- puter from Diss and Yarmouth, is the way they put it. Computers may have many uses, but the computer has yet to be invent- ed which can patrol an English village and inspire a little respect for the law into the local teenagers.
Equally, these sentences might be seen as a deliberate act of provocation. By punish- ing the victim of crimes for usurping the function of the police rather than catching the criminal, the law is simply showing us who is on top and daring us to do anything about it. The taxpayer is left with the bill not only for a grotesquely overmanned and overpaid police force, for its computers and helicopters and garrulous chief constables, for a Crown prosecution service, an aided defence service and judiciary, but also for keeping in prison the only people prepared to do anything about the rising tide of teenage violence and theft.
My own feeling is that the court acted in panic. The gross disparity between the 20 minutes spent in heavy-handed, possibly illegal questioning and the two five-year sentences which resulted would seem to indicate a belief in the rule of law which, on examination, seems not so much admirable as fanatical and despairing. Where teenage delinquents are concerned, the law has col- lapsed. It can no longer be applied. The police are not up to it. They have their computers and their helicopters and their grossly inflated wage packets, but they can no more sort out a gang of teenage hooli- gans with these things than they could knit a jumper. The law's response is to come down like a ton of bricks on those who still recognise it — the respectable citizens fathers and mothers, victims of crime.
Outside the rural idyll of these Norfolk villages, where teenage gangs are still happy to burgle the village post office and vandalise the church from time to time, things are getting seriously nastier. An arthritic, 45-year-old former steelworker in Cardiff saw a 20-strong gang of youths van- dalising traffic bollards close to his home on the Ely Estate, and decided to remon- strate with them. Ten of them turned on Mr Leslie Reed and his friend and kicked them both unconscious. Mr Reed was dead on arrival at Cardiff Royal Infirmary. His widow explained that the local vandals made a habit of laughing at authority and `simply don't care what they do'.
If we ask ourselves what we should do about all this, the first and most obvious answer is not to live on the Ely Estate in Cardiff if we can possibly help it. But where the entire countryside is effectively a 'no- go' area for the police — not because they can't go there, simply because they won't, unless to conduct breath tests outside the few surviving country pubs — the situation is different. Any form of vigilante activity which does not involve co-operation with the police who may be 10, 20 or even 30 miles away behind their computers is liable to involve prison sentences which are not so much severe as hysterical.
One element in the panic may be that the lawyers — judges, barristers, solicitors, clerks — are frightened for their jobs. If people are to avoid the processes of the law in protecting their lives and property, then the whole house of cards or banknotes comes tumbling down.
A possible way round this has been sug- gested. The Kingsmead Estate was one of the most notorious in East London, with 340 burglaries to its 1,000 flats, until Hack- ney Council decided to invoke the civil law. By obtaining an injunction against five named residents, they were able to send them to prison if any of the five caused damage to the estate, entered other flats apart from their own, or assaulted or threatened anyone on the estate. This is because a conviction is easier under civil law, requiring the balance of probability, than under criminal law, which requires proof beyond reasonable doubt. Now the Kingsmead Estate is a model of good order, we are told. I imagine these are High Court injunctions, since I have never been impressed by a County Court's ability to enforce its orders. And this means plenty of money for lawyers. Thank God. Soon the police should be more or less redundant, and we will all be able to go out to lunch with a friend once again. Meanwhile, Commander David Kendrick, of the East End police, has demanded more armed police patrols for London. He points out that East End gun murders have increased from 12 in 1991 to 23 last year. It seems a laughably small score. Is there any suggestion that these `armed response vehicles', which aim to arrive at an incident within 20 min Will have ever achieved anything useful? Will they be of the slightest help in protecting us from teenage burglars and muggers, or are they simply another device to protect the police, like Mr Hurd's oppressive and hYs terical firearms Act?
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