Attitudes to Crime

This weekend I found myself having an unusually long think. In this case it was triggered by the news that yet another burglar had been killed by a householder, but it'd been brewing all day. The Sunday Times had the astounding story of sheep rustling on its front page. Not the usual odd animal dragged into the back of a 4x4 in the dead of night, but an entire flock of 1,500 total value £100,000. This is becoming outright plundering of Britain's green and pleasant land and comes hard on the heels of the desecration of churches by lead thieves and routine stripping of northern streets of yorkstone paving. So many statues are being stolen that copies are having to be made in plastic and sadly not even war memorials appear to be sacrosanct anymore.   

Crime is the bread and butter world for probation officers of course and on a routine basis they have to try and make sense of the often tragic consequences of all kinds of human behaviour and depravity. We are always on a quest to answer the question 'why?' Sometimes it's easy, sometimes not, but at the same time we have to deal with our own feelings and attitudes as citizens and human beings.

I well remember this being brought home to me forcefully when still in training and on placement in a busy city probation office. Quite unexpectedly, one of my cases turned into a major child protection investigation with serious allegations of sexual abuse. Clearly this was taking matters out of the appropriate realm for a student and I sought urgent advice from my practice supervisor. Imagine my surprise then when he said 'oh don't bring that to me - I've got kids of my own.' I never did have much respect for the guy and that kinda put the tin hat on it. 

As with many of us, I've been the victim of a burglary and experienced the outrage of someone violating my private space, my home. Equally the mindless vandalism of my car. I suspect my initial reactions were not much different to most people, but that's without knowing the story behind the actions. Burglary of an occupied house is pretty unusual in my experience. Even more so if there is a confrontation. On Sunday I found myself contemplating what I would do in such a situation and it's not a particularly comfortable process. I think it highly likely that my 'fight or flight' response would be violent. In mulling it over, I concluded there can't really be any other explanation for a normally non-violent person keeping Dads old truncheon hanging behind the door.