Remarkably, this only highlights the difference between the US and & UK. In some US jurisdictions, shooting an intruder in the back when they run away does not merit a conviction:
So, political hysteria aside, we do have the right to deal with people on our property as long as we do so with reasonable force. Who says whether it’s reasonable? A jury of our peers. Seems like a fundamentally sound system to me.
“Active passivity?”
Is that anything like “close your eyes and think of England?”
In addition to less sexual assault and murder, the UK also has fewer assaults per capita than the US (according to nationmaster.com). Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather be more prone to property theft and less prone to being killed, raped or beaten up. I’d certainly feel safer, which is what your British correspondents refer to.
In any event, crime rates are largely a function of social problems, not criminal law. Few criminals consider the legal repurcussions of their actions before commiting an offence. We could attempt to establish a link between crime rates and the ability to murder someone for breaking and entering by comparing the US and the UK, but it is broken if we introduce other data points. Consider certain Scandinavian countries, which have what would be considered to be liberal laws in the US, but have comparatively low incidences of property crime and crimes against the person. The key influence is a stable society and a largely homogeneous, wealthy population. Also consider Australia, which has very similar self-defense laws as the UK, but a lower overall crime than both the US and UK. A strong link does not exist between potential punishments and overall crime.
Self-defense laws may have an effect in making potential criminals consider the chance of being attacked for trespass, but I’d say most burglars are too far out of their crack-addled brains to weigh up the fine pros and cons. Besides, it’s not as if US citizens are perfectly free to bash intruders about the head–as the cases show, just as in the UK, it’s no walk in the park being investigated by police and having to defend oneself in court, even if you have a better chance of getting off.
The recent debate in the UK is all about braying the right noises about law and order before an election, and nothing about tackling crime effectively by addressing its causes. The former is easy and gets one headlines; the latter is too hard and makes one “soft on crime”.
The law should be pretty clear on what constitutes reasonable force. After all people should be aware of what the legal standards are before they break them.
Marc
“Reasonable force” is of course a term of art – but it appears to mean what the court, taking into account the individuals involved and the circumstances surrounding the incident, considers the minimum force necessary to ensure that the offender would cease and desist his criminal actions. E.g., suppose a burglar/robber who breaks into the homes of Terrence “Hulk” Hogan and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and is apprehended by each of them in the act. Mr. Hogan would be able to take control of the situation using far less weaponry than Dr. Westheimer, given their respective body builds, and so what would be considered “reasonable force” by each homeowner would be quite different.
I take your point, but (as Polycarp points out) it all depends on the individual circumstances. While i can’t find an actual legal definition right now, this article in the Telegraph gives an overview of the basic issues:
…as well as two examples of a homeowner using a shotgun against a burglar - one which resulted in a decision not to prosecute and the other (of course) the infamous Tony Martin case.
I think this is a case where any attempt to reach a statutory definition of acceptable force will always come against anomalous situations with the result being either bad justice or bad law. By contrast, case-by-case assessment seems to me to be fairest for everybody concerned.
Another difference between burglaries in the U.S. and the U.K. - the U.K. has a much higher incidence of ‘hot’ burglaries - break-ins that are done when the family is at home.
It works like this: Take away a person’s right to defend himself in his home, and he’ll compensate by installing great anti-intruder measures like bars on the windows and better locks. So now the burglar is faced with the situation where he knows it’s really hard to get into a house when no one is home, but since people don’t have guns and can’t defend themselves, the easiest way to steal something is to just walk up to the house, ring the doorbell, and when the people answer force them back into the house, tie them up, and steal their stuff.
In the U.S. or Canada, if you try that you run the risk of a spouse coming down the stairs with a .45. So it’s much safer to break in while no one’s home.
Canada’s attitudes on this matter are much closer to the U.S. in this case. There have been plenty of cases of a homeowner or storekeeper shooting down an intruder, and they almost always lead to an acquittal, or charges not even being filed. There was even an extreme case in Calgary in which a store owner chased several fleeing robbers out of his store and shot them down with a shotgun, and he was acquitted.
Have you any evidence to corroborate the assertion that (i) UK homeowners install more home security than Canadians and Americans; and (ii) UK homeowners are fortifying their homes in response to stricter self-defense laws?
“It’s better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.”
Here’s an article in the Toronto Sun which claims that ‘hot’ burglaries in the U.K. are 50% of all burglaries, while in the U.S. the number is 13%.
Couldn’t find anything in particular about increased likelihood of barricading the home.
Here’s a recent editorial on this subject by Mark Steyn.
I always heard that active passivity means that you are to attempt to avoid confrontations, rather than just standing there and waiting.
In other words, it means to run away. Ain’t that something? They’re saying that you have to run away in your own home to avoid confrontations when someone intrudes upon you. And that just doesn’t fly with me.
Active passivity also means to phone the police, get your family out of the house or baracade yourself in a room holding a shotgun, or knife ready for a thief trying to break through the baracade. It means not challanging someone in your house taking your DVD player in such a way that could lead to the unneccessary death of either of you.
The counter-argument is that his death became necessary as soon as he crossed the threshold and put himself in close enough proximity to do further harm to you and your family. “Not challenging” them while they take your DVD player can mean opening up the possibility of things much worse than DVD player theft happening. Look, here’s an example of some guys who started out “just” to steal a television and jewelry. “Be cool, people, we’re not going to hurt you.” Also – these same guys had abducted a kid the previous week, told him the same thing, and let him go after robbing him. So who’s to say whether they’ll let you go safe or not? Sure they might; and, they might not. If you were one of the kids in the house while these guys were “just” robbing, and you had a gun, how would you resolve the uncertainty as to their intentions? I know I’d resolve it with extreme prejudice to them. Sorry, tie doesn’t go to the guy who broke into my house.
Sitting here thinking about this issue, it occurs to me that the differences between the US and UK ‘defense of home’ question can be traced back to America’s founding. Without flaming either of the culture’s involved, the entire reason people came to America way back before it was even a country was to protect their personal rights. Perhaps Americans have gotten a little more materialistic since then (ie the right to practice religion as they saw fit then, versus the right to keep their DVD player today) but the principle is the same. Americans seem willing to protect their rights, and by extension, their property, much more aggresively than Britons. (Forgive me if I’m not using the politically correct term there, I’m not sure what you want to be called. UKians?? 
As an aside, a lot of people seem to point to gun control (or lack therof) to the amount of violence in America, but could it be possible that it works the other way around? There’s so much violence in the news that Americans feel like they need to protect themselves, thus putting pressure on the govt. to restrict gun control. Any thoughts?
It’s not about a DVD Player. If he wants it, he can have it. And I don’t want to do anything to the guy, in fact, if I were single I’d probably just tell him to take it and get out.
But I’m not single. I have two other people in my house to consider. And in that consideration lies the idea that I don’t know what this clown in my house is going to do, and since he shouldn’t be there anyway I should be proactive rather than reactive.
I will defend my family in my house by all means necessary, and I won’t wait until my wife or son is a corpse to use those means. That’s all there is to it. If I ran from my house I might as well just leave the doors open. For me and my family to retreat would mean that if anything else happened I would potentially be in a far worse position when I had to do something.
Ah, but that’s not how it is. Generally speaking, “reasonable” is always the answer to the question in American law. A judge or a jury (or a combination of the two) will decide what is reasonable, but only after the fact.
And here’s more detail on the Hattori matter:
And Haymaker was acquitted in a criminal case. Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable. Fortunately, I believe the Hattori family won a civil award against this moron.
Sorry, it was Rodney Peairs who did the shooting. Haymaker was the friend.
Sam Stone and his dodgy cites again, which is a shame because I like his provocative points he raises, even if I usually disagree with most of them - at least I have to think, in this case sorry to tell, you are flat out wrong.
In referance to ‘hot burglaries’.
I frankly do not believe the cite at all, for one thing, we don’t use such a term, so it looks to me like this cite was doing some window dressing at the least.
What does happen a great deal is that US sites tend to have an agenda, its nearly always a pro gun agenda and they will try to distort numbers to make it appear that our form of gun control leaves UK citizens defenceless, of course such sites always leave out vital information in their ‘statistics’.One site quote ‘facts’ based upon UK crime figure dating from the 1980’s and comparing them to the US, when there is pelnty of recent information available, but maybe not as convenient to the case being made.
Look at this rather disreputable one, and look at the logo on the top, its pretty clear where this site stands on the gun issue, but it may lead the gullible down the wrong route, and it has much in common with other US pro gun crime studies.
http://www.ssaa.org.au/iladec98.html
Those graphs are extrapolated from what appeared to be trends leading into more recent times, but extrapolations when real figures are available are extremely lazy, sloppy and misleading, and are intended to illustrate and agenda ridden site, but its common enough in these pro gun places.
Next, I would tend to look at UK crime prevention sites, there are plenty of them an they all say pretty much the same thing, from the BBC, through to the individual local police forces, throught to the Governments sites.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/southeast/series4/burglary_crime.shtml
http://www.ukaea.org.uk/ukaeac/crimeinhome.htm
http://www.met.police.uk/crimeprevention/burglary.htm
http://www.psni.police.uk/index/crime_prevention/property___homes.htm
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime/burglary/preventionadvice/
I also work in a prison, whose population are mainly the sort of profile of criminals that take part in this sort of crime.
The reality is that the majority of burglaries actually take place during the day when the occupants are out at work, some specialise in targeting those who leave home fairly early as there are few people around and noone expects this crime to occur at this time of day, and the police are not all that active so early either.
Burglars I speak to nearly always state that they would never rifle an occupied house as it is far too uncertain, risky, attracts bigger jail terms and does not give enough time to search for small valuable items.
There is a sub specialisation of burglar who does just this, goes for occupied homes, these criminals are known as among UK crims as ‘creepers’, and they are quite rare, they look for things like credit cards, keys, wallets and stuff in obious places.
Next, despite the UK media portrayal, gun crime is very rare in the UK, burglars especially are unlikely to carry a weapon, having one in posession in furtherance of a crime will almost certainly mean 8 years in jail just as a base line, and very likely more, perhaps a life sentence.
In the UK we have a rule that is just starting to take effect, its called a ‘life licence’
The licence defines conditions to which the subject must adhere, any breaches of these conditions can and regularly means an atutomatice return to jail - no trial, nothing just a trip in a white van to a big house.
Licences are usually for a set period after release, however a life licence means that although the subject may have only served a three year term, they can be returned to jail at any time on breaches, for life, there is no term limit on such a licence.
Burglary is one of the crimes, along with personal robbery or violence, that is attracting ‘life licence’ terms, and when these get returned to jail, it has a salutary effect on other inmates.
The result is that former burglars are gving up on crimes that attract such terms, instead changing to other offences such as car crime.
The murder rate per head of population is actually 11 times higher in the US than for the UK, perhaps our violence is more common, though I would need to see the actual numbers, but our violence is far lower level.
Possession of a firearm will get you four years for a start, and thats for a previously unconvicted person, someone with any criminal past would do far worse.
…and finally, burglary is actually declining overall, though it also appears that the chosen targets are changing too, as urban police forces are more on the case and rural burglaries are rising.